


Double Lives

by Arachneedle



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: AU without Shinigami or demons, Adult Ciel Phantomhive, Angst, Control Issues, Daddy Issues, Dubious Consent, Eventual Sebastian Michaelis/Ciel Phantomhive, Eventual Smut, Human Sebastian Michaelis, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Jack the Ripper Murders, M/M, Plot, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Drama, Psychological Trauma, Sebastian is a depraved criminal, Seduction, Slow Burn, but not everyone knows that, when I say adult Ciel I mean sixteen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:41:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 83,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24151483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arachneedle/pseuds/Arachneedle
Summary: When Ciel Phantomhive returned from the dead aged 13, nobody knew who the dark-looking man by his side could be. Now Ciel is on the case of the Jack the Ripper murders, unknowingly chasing a killer far closer to home, but he's not the only one investigating and someone at the Yard is suspicious of that nasty butler by his side. As Sebastian draws Ciel deeper into a web of depravity, truths are unearthed and secrets revealed that should never have seen the light...
Relationships: Sebastian Michaelis & Ciel Phantomhive, Sebastian Michaelis/Ciel Phantomhive
Comments: 36
Kudos: 104





	1. In the Evening: That Butler, Listening in

Ciel Phantomhive was not a child. In the flicker of the orange flames his face shape could be discerned and it did not have the baby-fat of childhood, nor the shockingly large eyes he had once possessed. Indeed, the features that had greatly endeared him to all who knew him at one time were now a thing of the past, though his skin was as pale and smooth at sixteen as it had been right from the day he was born. His trousers also bore witness to his grownupness; they fell all the way to the floor, his characteristic shorts gone, and covered up his immensely long legs and feet that no longer wore the high-heeled shoes he had bolstered his height and vanity with at the paltry age of thirteen.

All this Madam Red saw and noted as she stood in the atrium of the mansion, waiting in that vast, cavernous hallway. It had been a long time since she had seen her nephew and it was a shock to her to discover now just how much he resembled his father. The gloomy entrance hall with the slender man descending the stairs seemed to come to life with ghosts, and she dropped her umbrella as she crossed the threshhold, Ciel’s shadow becoming Vincent’s for an instant. Up there, in the darkness where even the fractured light from the chandelier could not reach, she felt the cold presence of everything that had owned this house before it had been razed to the ground and wondered, not for the first time, how on earth Ciel had restored the place to its former glory. He had not called on her after the event and, like everyone else who had attended the funeral, she had believed him dead, weeping many tears over the bitter loss of the family she had loved so much. But now she surveyed the house and felt a tremor of unease, her red eyes cast down in dislike, disdaining the shadowy abode. Why on earth her grown-up nephew did not choose to redecorate with those bottomless funds of his, she did not know.

Sebastian had her umbrella. She caught sight of his brown eyes watching her as he stooped to pick it up, bowing politely, and not for the first she wondered if she was imagining the topaz shift in his gaze. The man was charming but she did not trust him - he was far too deep in her nephew’s confidences to be dismissed. His appearance was pleasant, it was true, more than, and if she had had fewer scruples she might have offered to... _ ahem _ ...examine him and his bodily health for Ciel, though she did not believe her nephew would be likely to pimp out his valet. Those white gloved hands gestured for her to proceed up the stairs, the long-lashed eyes closed in meek delight, the picture of servility. No man could enjoy serving as much as Sebastian did without some kind of agenda, she thought. His wages must be steep.

Ciel smiled down at her, leaning against the banisters, and in spite of herself she ran towards him. His blue eyes were wide and feline, his sharp jaw remaining feminine, his body reclining against the stairs, and the sight of him was so dear to her that she cried out, ‘Ciel!’ Then that habitual frown settled into the creases of his face again and he hid it in the crook of her shoulder, so that she could not see how far his expression fell behind her back, his lips downturned, his eyes unfocused, his pale visage cold. He embraced his aunt with indifference, pretending warmth, but his gaze wandered while he held her and found Sebastian, who was staring right back at him. Unnerving eyes the colour of flame met his with a little too much intensity, the usual uncanny depth of understanding unnerving him as they exchanged looks, and then he was pulling back from his aunt and smiling politely. He had learnt to wear such masks as good humour over the past few years and found it suited him; now he had grown out of his childish churlishness, he no longer resented diplomacy. Indeed, many people remarked that he was becoming a fine young man just like his father, a credit to the Phantomhive name - his lip curled at that. Vincent had been a careless head of the family and had suffered for it, they had all suffered for it.  _ He _ would not follow in his father’s footsteps.

No sooner had he exchanged niceties with his aunt than the door opened once more. He turned in expectation - more guests. This time, it was an older man in a top hat and his younger associate, both of them moustached. It appeared Lord Randall had brought an underling to Ciel’s private dinner party; so be it. The pretence of celebration was only another chance to talk business, as well as a way of getting his aunt’s obligatory visit over and done with. He saw her once a year and did his best to avoid any more interactions - he didn’t have time for her nonsense. If she only understood the man he was now, what he had to do, why he did not have time for her childish games, then perhaps she might leave him alone. It was better that she knew nothing, though, or as little as possible; better that she only recognised his fourth guest as a friend and not as a Chinese opium smuggler.

Lau had also brought a guest this evening, but Sebastian had expected that. He smiled up at the criminal merchant who beamed back at him, his long eyes sliding to the side to eye the butler up furtively as his sister did the same. As ever, Miss Ran Mao was inappropriately dressed, but Sebastian barely glanced at her; blatant sin did not trouble him, nor interest him in the slightest. Lau was perhaps a little more intriguing but for the time being his loyalties seemed to lie firmly with the Earl, or for as long as the young master continued to protect him from the law and threaten him by turns - as for Madame Red, well, she was only one more among many irksome relatives. Thankfully, Sebastian had no such people in his own life; he was not, he mused, what one would call a family man. Even if they had survived the fire, he would have killed them anyway. He was the cuckoo, the changeling in the nest, and he had acted accordingly towards his biological relatives.  _ Blood means nothing in such cases. _ He smiled slightly as he hung up the guests’ coats, thinking of how he had pulled the Earl from the ashes of the mansion, whisked him away and told him the story of his own family’s tragic death by fire in a country inn while they hid from the enemy. He had neglected to mention that he started the fire, of course.

He led them through to the dining room, seamlessly opening doors and ushering silently while the Earl pretended to show the way. This dance of subservience and power that they persisted in was fascinating to him, day-in, day-out pretending to be what they were not. The Earl was not a grown man, nor a nobleman - he knew that for a fact. He was not really the bastion of morality suppressing the underworld, nor so powerful that he could fully control it; he was but a drop in the ocean, a single man against an army. Thankfully that army was utterly disorganised, wretched and starving, so Sebastian could exploit their greedy, grasping natures to do his master’s bidding, but he knew the Earl was the same as those sinners, deep down. After all, he himself had switched sides, moving from a life of squalor and degeneracy to a sterilised, gilded version of the same thing. He did not know his master’s vices all that well, though, another reason that he remained with him, because recently the Earl had begun to change in a short space of time from a sugar-addicted infant to the mysterious, troubled young man he was now, with the result that Sebastian could no longer read or manipulate him quite the same. Oh, he had gone easy on him before, that was true - he was well-paid enough not to try and push his master too far, not to ever yearn to return to the underworld - but he needed that bit of leverage, complicity, to carry him forwards. So now he was more careful, the relationship between him and his prey changing as the latter grew up, the balance shifting so they began to circle around each other once more and become aware of each other’s presence.

The candle flames fluttered as Sebastian opened the door. Ciel stepped through, sliding easily into his chair at the head of the table. It had become a little small for him in the past months - he had shot up quickly - but he felt more at ease in it than he had before. Still, when he saw the way his aunt looked at him he knew she was comparing him to his father and his lips twisted sourly, his sullenness fleeting but still bubbling away beneath the surface as soon as his pleasant expression returned. Madame Red was seated to his right and Lord Randall to his left, as befitted their respective ranks, Lau a little way beyond, Ran Mao snuggling up to the young inspector at the foot of the table. The young man blushed, and Randall seemed to take it as his cue to introduce him.

“I don’t believe you’ve met yet,” he said in that gruff, contrived, paternal tone of his. Ciel inclined his head as his father used to do, saying nothing, looking pleasantly at his guest in expectation. The old man cleared his throat. “This is Detective Inspector Abberline, Earl.” Abberline raised his eyes quickly, still blushing, and bowed his head, evidently unsure of the etiquette he should follow. Ciel smiled stiffly at him.

“It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he said, beaming, and Abberline’s jaw dropped in surprise. He stammered as he searched for something to say.

“And you, my Lord,” he said, forgetting all modes of address and forms of grammar. Ciel sighed inwardly.  _ Dull _ . “I am honoured to meet you.” He seemed to be frowning down at his plate in anguish and Ciel leaned back in his chair, pretending to be relaxed when it was boredom that made him slouch. Sebastian watched him as he returned to the room, noting how the Earl’s aloofness had not changed one bit since his puberty. Normal people bored him, just as they bored Sebastian - honest people, whether saints or sinners, were a waste of time. Only a spider steeped in a web of lies could excite the young master, a nice, knotty game to get tangled up in, something to alleviate his craving for novelty. At least that much remained the same since he had begun to age, and Sebastian was constantly on the look-out for more. He would extract every secret of his master’s, whatever it took, and return him to the palm of his hand. They were both united in their inauthenticity and he thought it fitting that they should have stayed together so long, though of course there was always the danger of attachment; but if he was attached to his master or vice versa, there had not been any sign of it yet. They shared a mutual interest, that was all. The Earl would never deign to consider himself close to anyone, let alone a servant - even a servant as talented and unusual as Sebastian. He was almost inhuman at times, though his DNA was of the same species as his master, as every other ape on their ridiculous planet. He almost looked forward to burning in hell, just for the novelty of it. Not that he believed in the immortal soul; it was simply a wonderful fantasy, the idea that he would be eternally tickled by tongues of flame for his sins.  _ Perhaps I will burn as my family burned, one day _ , he thought, and knew it was another way in which he and his master were united.

This impromptu dinner party was not just random. Fred Abberline stared round at the sumptuous table, ridiculously expensive furnishings and refined company with wide eyes, wondering why on earth he had been allowed into this gathering. It was all very proper and posh, but somehow the combination of merchant, red-haired widow, police-chief and indecent girl, as well as himself, made up a motley crew, not forgetting his adolescent host. He had heard great stories of the Queen’s Watchdog and to find out that he was this slender boy, no older than his own youngest brother, was remarkable - if he hadn’t been so impressed, he might have found it funny. There was something about the Earl that unnerved him, though, so he remained solemn and uncomfortable, unable to truly relax in the heavy atmosphere of this enormous mansion.  _ Give me a good fireside and squalling siblings any day _ , he thought, sipping his wine. The food was exceptionally good, though, and it was true that the Earl was remarkably hospitable. Now it seemed they were discussing the reason for this party and he listened closely, afraid he would miss an important toast or bit of information.

“ - yes,” Madame Red was saying, her face flushed the same scarlet as her dress. “Yes, so it was. And to think! I had no idea you lived, you never even -”

“We found each other eventually,” Ciel said quietly, the fond words sour in his mouth. He pushed his plate away, suddenly not hungry. He had known this moment would come, when they would discuss the reason for the visit - three years since that day - but he had hoped his aunt would be more discreet. It seemed Angelina was quite lost, though, already in tipsy ecstasies. She laughed hysterically at his comment.

“Eventually? How droll you are!” Her fan flapped profusely as she slumped in her chair, sly eyes sliding over Sebastian as he came to remove the plates. Ciel recognised that lecherous look immediately and had to sip his champagne to cover his sudden restlessness, wetting his dry mouth with an even drier bitterness. Sebastian, in turn, looked at Ciel, watching him with an unsmiling look, and from across the table Abberline saw that look and frowned. He had never had servants himself, but it seemed to him that the butler, in spite of his excellent service, took a few too many liberties: knowing glances at his master, little asides in the conversation, walking the mansion halls like he owned the place. If Abberline didn’t know better, he would have thought there was some secret between them, something that facilitated such an uneasy transcendence of boundaries. Randall, it seemed, hadn’t noticed, though he seemed to have gritted his teeth - he did not like to let his hair down around the likes of the Earl. The adolescent met his aunt’s gaze evenly, only a slight colour in his fair cheeks to show his irritation.

“I had duties to attend to,” he said lightly, wiping his mouth very carefully. Talking about that time always set him on edge; he had lost everything and gained a few too many secrets in the process, Sebastian among them. “I did what I had to in order to survive - lay low with someone I trusted and waited for the danger to pass.” The butler’s eyes flicked sharply to his master’s face when he heard that, a small, sinister smile tucked into the corners of his lips. It seemed the champagne had got to his master’s head more than he realised, to be admitting such dangerous things as - oh, that he  _ trusted _ his butler.  _ Trust _ . Sebastian rolled the word around on his tongue silently. It was strange to him, that idea, but he wondered then if his master was more taken in by his facade than he seemed. After all, the Earl knew of his past but not in much detail, and it had been so long since the butler had been anything but a butler and the Earl anything but an Earl that perhaps he had forgotten that they were merely playing their different roles. Ciel seemed to notice Sebastian’s sharp glance because he met that gaze momentarily, assessing the heat in those flaming topaz eyes, then looked away, swallowing. He could not afford to draw attention to his butler at this point, while discussing such a delicate subject in such varied company, but he would question him later on that stare; its hot intensity, hot enough to turn the tablecloth to cinders, and the mocking expression that his words had induced. He knew he should be more careful but he had let his tongue run away with him - he was not yet so much of an adult that alcohol did not affect him, unfortunately.

Madam Red pursed her lips across the way, her hair shifting as she tilted her head on one side to examine her nephew. With a glance that was all too keen, she said, “I see - you did not trust me.” Ciel opened his mouth to deny it, colouring, but she held up a finger imperiously, asking, “How exactly did you meet Sebastian?” Ciel swallowed, his mouth going dry again, as she glanced from him to his butler, who bowed slightly to her, beaming with an expression of the utmost innocence. It seemed he was on his own, then.

“I -” He took a measured sip of his champagne, his head spinning slightly. Troubled, he sighed, glaring into the shadows. “He pulled me from the wreckage of the manor.” Madam Red arched an eyebrow and Ciel switched his gaze back to her, Sebastian, still holding the champagne bottle, presiding over the interchange. Even Lau opened his half-closed eyes a bit wider, Ran Mao hanging off Abberline’s shoulder to get a better view, the young inspector blushing and sweating slightly as he watched the Earl. Lord Randall transferred his eyes slowly from his glass to his host, his ears pricking up like a bloodhound’s. Ciel restrained himself from shifting in his seat, feeling uncomfortably like he was on trial. “He saved my life when it seemed all hope was lost. He was there when no one else was.” He stared round at them all defiantly, his sapphire eyes blazing, and Sebastian let out a silent, satisfied sigh, revelling in his master’s coldness. It was always good to see the blatherers put in their place, the Earl doing what he could not - if only Sebastian had been born with better luck, he might have been staring them down himself. The sight of the young master doing so was gratifying enough, however, and he felt a slow warmth pulsing in his body as he stood by, enveloped in the Earl’s power. Madam Red seemed silenced by that and sat back in her seat; she was not smiling now. It was not good, Sebastian knew, to upset one’s relatives in public - it broke many rules of etiquette. But Madam Red had needed putting in her place and it served her right, when she violated the delicate aesthetics that guarded the nobility from all such shameful interactions.

Seeing his chance, Sebastian swooped in with the dessert, setting down delicate plates of lemon cheesecake before each diner. Abberline unconsciously moved aside slightly to let the butler put the dish in front of him, then wished he hadn’t; making allowances for servants was bad form, he should have known that. But he forgot all about his faux-pas when he picked up the little silver fork and tasted the dessert, for one bite of the super soft, sweet cream, just thick enough to linger in his mouth, and the light, dry biscuit base, finely powdered, was enough to drown out all other sensations. His eyes widened till they started out of his head and he couldn’t help exclaiming, “This is delicious!” The other guests looked up at him and he went bright red, instantly regretting his comment, but the Earl actually smiled at him, and he saw that that pale, precise mouth was poised around a fork, the small, pink tongue engrossed in cleaning the implement of every speck of sugar. Ciel’s eyes glazed over as he tasted the sweetness on his tongue, the sharpness of the lemon and the lightness of the cream offset by the heavier base and more sickly sweet crumb, the tiny portion compact with flavours so that even a single bite was almost enough to sate him, let alone a whole slice. It was a taste of heaven and yet almost too pleasurable, too sinful for that - a mouthful of florid hell, bright with colour, hinting an edge of intensity and cruelty but so engrossing it left him helpless, taking his attention away from his surroundings and turning off his hyperactive mind for a sublime second. Sebastian watched him, smiling slightly, his bright eyes devouring his master’s expression. In spite of his age, his master had not lost his sweet-tooth, and Sebastian thanked God or Satan or whoever controlled these things for that, because it was one of the few ways in which he knew he would always hold unequivocal power over the Earl.  _ Sugar slut _ , he thought, and his lips twitched, his gaze burning, but at that moment Ciel looked up and glimpsed his expression and something unreadable crossed his face, so that Sebastian quickly ironed out his features.

At last the meal was over, the butler removing the plates and offering round the alcohol. Madam Red was quick to take a glass of sherry, watching Sebastian while he poured it out for her and leaning far too close to him, Lord Randall accepting a modest  whisky and Abberline copying him after a moment of indecision, Ran Mao drinking boldly out of his glass and Lau savouring his wine. Ciel declined and flicked his fingers irritably at Sebastian when the butler arched his eyebrows in a question, daring him to drink more. But soon the Earl settled back into immaculate calm, his feathers only slightly ruffled, and Lau watched him fondly, thinking with pride of how much the little Lord had outgrown his temper. Oh, it was still there, no doubt of that, but he took care to hide it better; perhaps he had stoked the fire too high before and become burnt? Under the table, Ran Mao ran a hand over Abberline’s thigh, her face still utterly impassive but her yellow eyes watching his intensely like a cat stalking its prey, and Lau in turn ran his hand over Ran Mao’s thigh so she shivered slightly and purred. Abberline was a deep red, utterly distracted, Madam Red excusing herself to go to the bathroom, so now Lord Randall took his chance and turned to Ciel. The Earl watched him without surprise - he had been expecting this all evening. His butler leaned slightly closer, pretending not to listen.

“Earl,” the man began gruffly, speaking in low tones, “I am sure you are aware that I rarely do...social calls.” The Earl inclined his head, his expression unchanged, and Randall took it as a sign of his assent. The old man was almost blushing, though that might have been the wine - what was so embarrassing that he, always forthright, hesitated to say it? “I have...we at the Yard were investigating a certain case, one which has yet to reach the papers but - it will have by tomorrow if it is not in the evening headlines.” Ciel listened, impassive, Sebastian hovering in the shadows behind him, silent and still. “I would not have come to you -” His eyes seemed to flash under his heavy eyebrows, and Ciel’s glinted back, Lord Randall’s anger most amusing - “but I have been expressly  _ ordered _ to hand this case over to you.”  _ Oh? _ Ciel raised his eyebrows, his butler shifting infinitesimally closer. “Her Majesty -” Randall glanced at Lau, disapproving, but mistook the merchant’s habitual expression of oblivious calm to mean that he was not listening, or not a threat - “Her Majesty has forced my hand. You must take the case, she says.”

Ciel examined his empty glass, twisting it this way and that in the candlelight. “What is it?” he asked, his tone soft and cold. Randall sighed.

“Murder,” he replied, an expression of distaste on his rugged features. “A serial killer has been going round killing prostitutes in Whitechapel.” Ciel raised his eyebrows, turning to face the Chief Commissioner. Lord Randall went on, “It’s a rum business - unusual elements in it, we suspect it is linked to something occult. Since that is more your area than ours, I hope you have better success in catching the culprit, whom I am told is to be nicknamed ‘Jack The Ripper’ by the tabloids.” A stolid harrumph told the Earl and his butler what the old man thought of that. His ordeal over, Lord Randall turned away and looked to his subordinate, whom by now was completely helpless under the spell of the wine, the candlelight and Miss Ran Mao’s explorations. “Abberline,” the older man said, clearing his throat, and the young inspector jumped out of his seat.

“Y-yes sir!” He raised his voice louder than intended and Lau’s eyes moved slightly, slitted and darting like a snake’s. Lord Randall’s nostrils flared and he looked displeased, but he nodded to his underling anyway and the man adopted an immensely serious expression to overcompensate for his carelessness, his face so rigid it looked like he’d had a rod shoved up his arse. Reaching behind himself solemnly, he looked as if he might retrieve something - but then it was not where he wanted it, and Sebastian watched in amusement as he searched frantically under the table, coming up pink again as Ran Mao regarded him implacably. He almost fell into profuse apologies and forgot his task until Sebastian stepped in, producing the thick folder he had been looking for.

“My apologies,” the butler said, bowing, as Abberline goggled at him and Randall looked most disapproving. “I took the liberty of moving this file somewhere less intrusive during the meal.” His eyes glowed as he looked up and the Chief Commissioner flared his nostrils again as if he had encountered something putrid, unfazed by Sebastian’s charms and power play. With dignity, Lord Randall took the file and then handed it over to Ciel, a pointless formality.

“Here is everything there is to know about the murders,” he said with dignity. “You will be allowed to visit the crime scenes tomorrow.” Ciel had already begun to leaf through the folder, no longer listening to the Chief Commissioner.  _ More power games _ . Abberline watched, mesmerised by the endless, delicate dance of decorum and deceit. But now Madam Red returned to the room and the Earl passed the folder back to Sebastian, who took it with him as he cleared away the last of the dinner things. Randall and his associate rose, taking their leave. Ciel smiled pleasantly and vacantly at them both.

“This has been a very productive evening,” he said politely, shaking both their hands. “A fitting way to celebrate the anniversary of my accession to the Earldom, I think.”

Lau had risen too, casually intertwining his fingers with his sister’s. “And to celebrate the anniversary of your miraculous survival,” he remarked mildly, a coyness about his half-closed eyes. The Earl swallowed, fixing him with a look before he turned to his aunt. She still looked downcast, sober again.

“I am sorry for causing discord,” she said softly, crestfallen. “I did not mean to stoke up trouble at your dinner party, and on the day of your parents’ passing, of all things.”

Ciel smiled at her, his widest, most enchanting smile, the one that had won everyone to his side as a child, the one that he had inherited from both his parents, the smile he had not used in earnest since his parents’ death. “I forgive you, Aunt Angelina,” he said innocently, taking both her hands in his, and her expression softened as she smiled.

“Oh, Ciel,” she breathed, pulling him into her arms. He clasped her gently, enduring the physical contact for as long as he could stand it, and Sebastian saw Madam Red’s face fall again as she leant against her nephew’s shoulder, a flash of - pain? regret? sorrow? - replacing her convincing tranquillity. Another second, and the two relatives parted, waving each other off. At last, the door closed, and the manor returned to silence and darkness, the air filled with tension. The Earl did not, or tried not, to look at his butler as he climbed the stairs, his mind whirling. When he reached the landing, he composed himself and turned around.

“Run me a bath,” he said. “Tomorrow is going to be a long day.”

Sebastian bowed, his eyes glowing red. “Yes, my lord.”


	2. In the Morning: That Butler, Deducing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ciel and Sebastian visit the crime scene and try to piece together the facts, but it's not just the puzzle pieces that are missing...

They were up first thing in the morning, the butler striding into his master’s room and flinging wide the curtains so that the Earl threw an arm across his face to shield his eyes from the white light. His wrist was bony and fragile, his limb long and exceptionally slender, his muscles thickening around the bicep and shoulder where time had begun to build up some strength and masculinity. Sebastian contemplated that long arm and the nest of damp, dark hair beneath it as he poured out his master’s tea, telling the Earl in soothing tones, “Today’s tea is a breakfast blend of unsweetened Darjeeling.” Ciel cracked open a recalcitrant eye, his scar showing up pink and furious against the burning blue and purple of his gaze, tempered somewhat by the softness of sleep. Sebastian noticed then that his master had flung his night shirt on the floor during his sleep; as the boy sat up in bed, the covers slid down his abdomen, revealing a sharp collarbone and creamy-skinned chest, the tracery of black hairs around his belly button and armpits dark as ash against his pale flesh. His rosebud nipples sharpened in the cold air and he seemed to notice his condition, for he glanced resentfully up at Sebastian and then his expression became more guarded as he tucked the duvet around his chest. He hooked one long, black-nailed finger into the handle of his teacup and sipped, grimacing.

“Good morning, Sebastian,” he said absentmindedly, pushing away his drink. “Bring me something sweet.” The butler raised his black eyebrows into question-mark arches, regarding his master without amusement.

“You will need to eat something more nourishing if you are to survive the long day, Young Master,” he replied, placing the teapot back on the trolley. “Please eat what I have brought you.” His expression was imperceptibly annoyed, barely disturbed, but beneath the surface he ground his teeth; he would not play the nursemaid, not to this spoiled Earl who was so very nearly an adult now, judging by the state of his body. He was disappointed to see that his master could not break the habits of childhood, in spite of all his fine words about maturity and duty.

Ciel shot him a burning glare but ate anyway, reluctantly filling his growling stomach and pushing the bowl aside when he was done. He turned his face away, blushing slightly. His butler had dared to give him an order and he had obeyed it - why had he capitulated so quickly? It unsettled him to think that Sebastian had power over him, but then he supposed he had become more accomodating of late to those around him, including his butler. Ciel had finally seen the merit of civility and the gravity it could imbue him with, the favours he could be owed, and so he had adopted this new attitude, changing his outlook bit by bit. Everyone seemed to approve, which annoyed him more than anything, but he had to be careful not to become too nice; being helpful to Sebastian was a step too far. But this time he knew he had acted simply to avoid self-sabotage, so he regained his dignity and continued as normal, his feathers unruffled.

Sebastian dressed him quickly, neither master nor servant catching the other’s eye. Running his hands over those long, white colt’s legs, Sebastian could not help but regret somewhat the Earl’s advancement from shorts to trousers - those slender, bony ankles were far too fine to hide, and the black down on his pale thighs only served to improve their pearlescent glow. Then again, it would have seemed absurd, perverse, even, for the young master to wear shorts at his time of life; such things were considered indecent, they both knew that. There came a point when dressing an adolescent in clothes too infantile for their age stopped being charming, innocent or adorable and became sinister, perverted, inappropriate - Sebastian smiled slightly at the thought. His master would never be vigorous or masculine in the way he was, in the way the previous Earl had been, but it didn’t stop him from having a certain grown-up charm that was beginning to have its effect on those around him, not least his aunt. Ran Mao no longer teased him and Lau spoke to him more directly than before, ignoring the butler more and more, and it suited Sebastian to experience less scrutiny, since it allowed him to be more unscrupulous.

Ever since he had joined the Earl’s household he had kept his head down, for he had needed to lie low after everything that had preceded his meeting with Ciel Phantomhive; the shadow of his past deeds loomed all too large, and in order to escape them he had had to transform his identity. Not that he minded, though - it suited him to become the refined ‘Sebastian’, an elegant, almost gentlemanly servant, humble and diligent and as far from coarse as could be. Only his master knew what had come before, and that without the details, and to his knowledge there was very little remaining record of his misdeeds. He suspected that they kept a police file on him at the Yard as they did with all convicted criminals still at large, but he also knew that while he served the Queen’s Guard-dog he was untouchable, even by the long arm of the law. He could have destroyed the evidence and the reports, but that would seem even more suspicious; he was safe for now, he didn’t need to take further steps. If the Earl found and read his file, it would only confirm what he already knew of his servant, and Sebastian felt his master was too reliant on him to ever let a few convictions trouble him - they weren’t the most moral pair. Teasing glimpses of his master’s soul had been revealed to him before, but in three years he had never yet discovered the full extent of the boy's depravity. Someday, he hoped all would be clear to him, the full sinfulness of the Earl before him.

They left the mansion early, taking the carriage through the centre of London. Ciel gritted his teeth at every bump in the road, the slow crawl through the badly paved streets becoming yet more excruciating when they reached squalid, crowded Whitechapel. The smell of the East-End had never left his nostrils since the first time he had investigated the underworld, and though he was desensitised to the poverty by now it never failed to take away his appetite. If it had been possible, he would have told Sebastian to put all these people out of their misery and destroy this place - raze it to the ground the way the manor had been razed, set a wildfire that would burn off that stench - but even he couldn’t get away with destroying half of London. Still, as the carriage came to a halt he had to brace himself for the odoriferous, subterranean darkness of the outside world; it was a peculiar punishment for a nobleman, these trips into the crepuscular slums, but then he was a rather peculiar nobleman.

Sebastian leapt down from the carriage and swung open the door, reaching up to hand his master down. The Earl ignored his arm, stepping down on his own. He did not want to be handled like a lady, not now that he was as good as an adult, and Sebastian’s features tightened as he noticed his master’s stiffness - it was going to be one of  _ those _ days, then. His prim little boy of an employer had begun to chafe at the confines of childhood and occasionally he would forget this, to his detriment; no doubt there would be some punishment in store for him, or at least a day of icy coldness from the Earl. The young master had punished him less and less of late, even when he was unhappy with him, letting a few stern words or the silent treatment suffice, but in spite of the gravity it gave him Sebastian only used it as an opportunity to take more liberties than ever, interested to see what provoked a reaction. This cold dismissal was just one of many, and though he accepted it as calmly as any servant would inwardly he soured - the little brat couldn’t really pretend to take the high ground, after all this time? Patience had never been his master’s strong suit.

There was a crowd around the crime scene, police officers holding them back. A number of journalists were trying to get photos or quotes and jostling with the hundreds of urchins and charwomen and labourers fighting to get a glimpse. The prostitutes and petty thieves were also there but attempting stealth, since they could not get too close to the enforcers of the law lest they themselves were nabbed. Sebastian did not much like bobbies, but he had no fear of them in his present disguise, not with the young master by his side. They slipped easily through the crowds which parted for them, the public awed at the sight of this young noble in his top-hat and cape and the enigmatic butler in his shadow. Even strangers seemed to recognise the Earl’s authority more now that he was older and taller - it was as if everyone had finally realised that the Queen’s Watchdog was no longer a puppy, now a villainous noble in his own right. Privately, Sebastian thought it was ridiculous, having seen his master at his most vulnerable and impetuous and witnessing daily his delicate body, so frail and adolescent, but he was not going to betray him. If the Earl thought that he was becoming a powerful, exigent lord, then Sebastian was not going to break the spell of his delusions.

At first, the officers guarding the crime scene did not recognise Ciel, but when he pulled out a royal warrant they scuttled aside quickly and let him into the room. The sight that met their eyes was crude and grisly and Sebastian did not miss the bob of his master’s adam’s apple as he swallowed his bile. The room was spartan and grimy, the only furniture a bed with one missing post and a sagging mattress and a wash-stand in the corner. A single feature marked the space - the profusion of red that had soaked all the way through the bedclothes and splattered the floor, the walls, the small, dirty window that looked out on a blind wall in the top right-hand corner opposite. Not all of the blood had dried and some of it had pooled so thickly on the bed and floorboards that it had congealed into a black muck, the rust-coloured splashes enlivening the drab ambience and monochromatic decor with a horrific gaudiness. In the silence, Ciel’s shallow breaths were loud and rasping, the deliberation with which he controlled their speed and slowed them down to something measured and deep transparent. After a moment, the Earl advanced, examining the room. There was not much else to see, but he tried the window and found the catch rusted shut, covered over with dust and cobwebs, and the gas lamp had burned down to its lowest ebb, likewise the candle in its holder. He composed himself and turned to Sebastian. “Summarise,” he said, folding his hands on the knob of his cane. 

Sebastian cleared his throat, reciting the facts from memory. “Mary Ann Nichols was last seen alive at the junction of Osborn Street and Whitechapel Road at half past two in the morning on August the 31st. She was found dead on Buck’s Row by two men at quarter to four on the same night. She was an alcoholic whose husband had left her some years earlier for another woman. An ordinary housewife who became a prostitute, sir. This room belonged to the most recent victim, Annie Chapman, another lower middle-class woman whose marriage went astray. She was also an alcoholic and prostitute. Her body was discovered three days ago in an unsecured yard behind 29 Hanbury Street. No sign of the culprit.” Ciel frowned, surveying the room.

“And? What do you see?” He liked to test Sebastian, to compare their intelligences, and Sebastian was more than happy to oblige - he so loved games. His golden eyes darting round the room, he began to think.

“There is no lock on the door to this room so the murderer could have walked in easily. Annie was murdered in the night so it would have been dark; she was most likely inebriated or asleep. That said, both the lamp and the candle have burned down, so unless Annie went to sleep and left them burning the killer would have entered a fully lighted room. A woman of such little means would never waste candles or gas, both of which are expensive commodities - she probably only turned on the lights so she could undress and get into bed. It would have been impossible for the killer to climb through such a small window on the third floor with a sheer drop on either side, but even in the improbable event that they had climbed up, the lock on the window has not been forced and the catch is rusted shut, so the killer could not have entered that way. The body was not found here but by the amount of blood - four or five pints, at least - Annie Chapman would almost certainly have died here, and without a shadow of doubt was murdered in this room.” Ciel nodded, a sharp jerk of his chin.

“Conclusion?” Sebastian bowed his head.

“Based on the evidence I would say that Annie Chapman was murdered sometime before dawn on the 8th of September by someone well-known to her, whom she would not have regarded as a threat,” he said, and the Earl graced him with one of his rare smiles. “The stairs are noisy and the lights were on, so even if she was heavily intoxicated Annie would have known someone was coming. She was a habitual alcoholic and had lived in the East-End for at least ten years, so she would have been used to having to defend herself while drunk. The killer was a trusted acquaintance, therefore.” Ciel narrowed his eyes, already jumping ahead. Sebastian felt a little twinge of pride at his deductions, but knew that the Earl was always looking forward for the next move, the next step in this eternal game. He cocked his head on one side as his master turned back to him.

“Were the circumstances the same for Mary Ann Nichols? Can we see the crime scene?” Sebastian shook his head.

“Regrettably, no. It seems a week is enough for the public to invade such spaces once more, sir. However, in the report it seemed to suggest that Nichols lacked the funds for a room of her own; she spent her money on drink and was unable even to manage the doss-house.” Ciel raised an eyebrow at him sharply.

“Doss-house?” Sebastian hid his smile.

“Pardon, my lord - slang for cheap public lodgings.” Unwittingly, he had slipped back into his old East-End parlance; he was getting a little too excited by this case. “Any traces of Nichols’ murder will have been washed away by the rain and street-sweepers. She was found in the gutter under a tarpaulin, covered in blood. However, she was seen by witnesses little more than an hour before her murder, stumbling around drunk, so if she had cried out we would have been told. As it is, I think she must have known her killer too - there would have been far more of a struggle and more evidence if the murderer had been a stranger or a hostile acquaintance.” Ciel grimaced, unsatisfied.

“What you  _ think _ is not good enough, Sebastian,” he spat, his mind racing, and the butler stiffened. “We need more to go on. If they were both prostitutes they could have had any number of regular clients; it will be impossible to find and question all of them.” He thought of how easy it was for one more killer to slip into the rabbit warren of the slums and out of sight and slammed his stick down, his one blue eye burning. “Where are the bodies?”

Sebastian had bowed slightly but now he halted, raising his eyes slowly. “There was a peculiarity in the file Lord Randall gave me,” he said slowly, and Ciel looked daggers at him. Unsmiling, the butler gritted his teeth. “It appears the corpses will not be available for our perusal.”

“What?” The Earl swung round to face him, his one sapphire eye blazing. “What the devil -” He stopped himself, breathing hard, his expression murderous. “What is he playing at?” Sebastian shrugged infuriatingly.

“I can only suppose they have already removed the victims from the morgue,” he said nonchalantly as Ciel glared accusingly at him. “I can fetch the autopsy repor-”

“It’s not enough!” Now the Earl was really incensed. He paced up and down on his long legs, his expression twisted. “How am I supposed to catch this fiend when I hardly know what he’s doing? Coroners can’t be trusted - I  _ must _ see the bodies myself!”

Sebastian replied sardonically, watching his master from beneath heavy-lidded eyes. “I’m afraid that’s not possible, sir,” he said, each word dripping with emphasis. The Earl bared his teeth at him and looked as if he might hit him. Sebastian delivered the final blow with something of a masochistic satisfaction. “Both women are already in the ground.” Ciel cried out in rage, swinging his stick in an arc and knocking the basin off the nightstand in the corner so that it hit the floor and shattered into a thousand pieces. The butler watched him coldly, unamused. “If you begin destroying the evidence, young master, we will have nothing to go on,” he said, his voice a flat baritone, and Ciel’s nostrils flared like a young bull’s as he prepared to charge. He raised his stick to strike Sebastian but the butler caught the blow easily, his gloved fingers closing around the weapon. Stepping closer to his master, he looked down his nose at him and asked, “Are you quite done?”

There was a long moment where Ciel’s blue eye blazed into Sebastian’s orange ones, the flames cold and the ice burning, the topaz and garnet of the butler’s cool condescension meeting the upstart sapphire and turquoise of the Earl’s fury. Ciel had grown, the top of his head now level with Sebastian’s nose, and the servant felt a cold thrill at the thought that his master could almost look him in the eye, a dangerous heat spreading through him. The Earl would not let up at first, intent on holding eye contact, wielding what little power he had over his butler - just to intimidate him, for once, just once, to feel that he had unnerved him - but he was not rewarded with the satisfaction of Sebastian’s surprise, only a slight shift in his gaze that he could not read. And so, letting out a long breath, he stepped back, breaking eye contact. Sebastian watched him coldly, calm and immovable once more, but there was a bright edge to his scarlet gaze that danced in Ciel’s peripheral vision. He broke the silence.

“There is...one person we could go to for information, my lord. He might know something about the bodies.” Ciel raised his eyes slowly, a low resentment simmering in them as he realised whom his butler meant. Indeed, neither servant nor master was eager to brave that gloomy shop and the wiles of the half-mad embalmer, but it seemed it was their only choice. And so, when Sebastian had swept the shards of the broken basin into a corner, they departed, closing the door on the sordid scene and ducking out through the crowds to where the carriage awaited. It was then that Ciel realised with a true certainty just how long a day it would be, and was glad, begrudgingly, of his butler’s advice that morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been doing so much research on the Jack the Ripper case and it is a pain in the arse to try and bridge the gap between the crazy inaccuracies in the manga and the rather dull reality of the murders. Still, I'm enjoying putting my deerstalker on and getting into some detective work, and teasing you all about Sebastian's dark past...New chapter probably same time next week


	3. At Noon: That Butler, Visiting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lacking the relevant information they need for the case, Ciel and Sebastian are obliged to pay a visit to their peculiar associate, the Undertaker.

The sun was high in the sky by the time they reached Undertaker, but hidden behind swathes of thick cloud that blocked out all semblance of the day. Descending from the carriage, Earl Phantomhive stood outside and regarded the doorway with its menacing overhang and tastelessly, grimy sign, the gaudy yellow and purple faded, scratched and discoloured beyond all recognition so that only the gigantic stone skull-and-crossbones signified what trade the store provided. That, and the samples of coffins and gravestones resting against the blistered wall, sandwiched in between two half-timbered monstrosities that must have somehow survived the Great Fire of London and lived on in glorious squalor for centuries. Ciel squared his shoulders, adjusting his cape and pulling his hat down over his eyes. He would rather not be here at all, but there was no other option.

Sebastian stepped up to the opaque fanlight and rapped smartly on the door. As usual, complete silence filled the eerily empty street and, though it was only the beginning of autumn, the Earl shivered, holding his cane tightly. Sebastian was about to knock again when the ancient portal swung inwards, wheezing like a suffocating drunk, revealing an interior so black that it was impossible to see anything within. “After you,” Sebastian said politely, arching his eyebrows at his master, and Ciel looked at him coldly as he stepped inside, the door swinging shut behind them with a loud slam. They advanced tensely, the room cluttered with its usual paraphernalia of coffins, antiques and embalming tools, heaving with coffins and devoid of light. Only the leaded windows cast a wan illumination, and even then, the diamond panes were small and grimy, slightly green so that the room seemed underwater. Ciel cleared his throat.

“Undertaker,” he called out. In the smothering silence his voice sounded softer, less assured than he had intended, and he had to repress his annoyance, his heart beating fast. Nothing happened and Sebastian peered through the gloom, so thick you could cut it with a knife - nothing stirred. Suddenly, there was a creaking, grinding noise and the nearest coffin began to open, the lid swinging back and landing on the wall with a loud bang. Ciel stepped back, swallowing, and when the ensuing dust-cloud parted he saw a figure emerge from the sober velvet lining of the casket. Swathed in black fabric, the Undertaker’s face and hair were as grey as the cobwebs that lined the room, his body an amorphous, bony mass beneath his shapeless cassock, his hat with its oddly shaped tassel crumpled down low over his eyes so that his long fringe obscured his gaze. He giggled loudly, chewing on one long, dark fingernail.

“So, Earl,” he hiccupped, guffawing to himself, his sharp teeth bared. Ciel stiffened, unsmiling. “Have you come to claim your coffin at last? I used your precisest measurements - if you haven’t grown too much, I’m sure it will suit perfectly…” Disconcerted, Ciel took a second to regain his footing.

“No,” he said irritably, “no, I am not here for myself.” He turned to Sebastian and motioned for him to come forward, though there was no need; evidently he wanted his butler’s support, the comfort of his presence. Sebastian might have been amused, but he was too suspicious of Undertaker to allow himself any private mirth in his company. His master continued, “I need information concerning some recent clients of yours.”

“Oh?” Undertaker drummed on his teeth with his talons, grinning like a shark. “Well, I’m afraid I know nothing.” Ciel sighed, already bored with their usual routine. Undertaker waited a moment before delivering his next line, then said, in a voice full of suggestion, “Unless, of course, you can give it to me…” He trailed off into a whisper, approaching the Earl, walking with a stoop though he was no hunchback. He lifted a hand towards Ciel’s face and the butler behind him stiffened, on his guard. But Undertaker only smiled slowly at both the boy and his servant, his fringe rustling so that they knew that his eyes must be wide underneath his hair. “Give it to me, Earl - give me  _ prime laughter _ !” At once he dissolved into anticipatory chuckles, nervously fluttering around like a moth in a lamp. Ciel maintained his dignity, keeping his chin up and his face expressionless. Looking bored, he gestured to his butler.

“Sebastian,” he said, the name an invocation. The servant bowed, pressing a hand to his heart.

“Yes, my lord.” He turned to his master, wondering if he would be allowed to make a request. He knew what kind of things made the Undertaker laugh and he was not sure how much the Earl understood, but he didn’t want him to see him in that state, if possible. “Please step outside, my lord.” Ciel narrowed his eyes at him. This was the second time that day that his butler had given him an order - was he getting ideas above his station? He couldn’t abide upstarts. Still, if his butler needed privacy then...oh, what the hell, he would go outside and be damned. He didn’t want to spend another second more in that shop, the fresh air (such as it was) would do him good. Taking a deep breath, he turned on his heel and left, shutting the door behind him. He couldn’t help feeling that he was missing something important, because every time this happened Sebastian asked him to wait outside, as if this game was something only adults could play. Perhaps that was where the Undertaker had got his measurements from - Sebastian surely knew them, if anyone did - or perhaps they simply sat and reminisced about Sebastian’s criminal past, of which Ciel knew so little, over a cup of tea. It bugged him, though he hated to admit it, that he had gained so little knowledge of his butler’s former exploits over the course of three long years; perhaps it was better that he didn’t know, though. If he was harbouring a monster there was nothing he could do about it and he suspected from the looks of the inspectors at the Yard whenever they visited his house that Sebastian was already in their records, significantly so. But when Lord Randall had tried to open the subject with him once, a long time ago, Ciel had shut him down. Had he done the right thing?

Suddenly the building shook with the monstrous sound of Undertaker’s laughter. Sebastian opened the door, looking unruffled except for a slight sheen of sweat on his brow, beaming at his master. “It is done,” he said, and Ciel detected a mild, husky breathlessness in his tone which also testified to the effort that must have gone into whatever it was that he had done. The Earl decided that this was one of the things he was better off not knowing. He stepped into the room and found Undertaker hugging himself, digging his nails deep into his arms and rocking from side to side as tears streamed down his cheeks, his face distorted by the grin that stretched all the way across it. Wracked with hysterics, he could hardly bring himself to answer Ciel’s questions.

“Were either of these women your clients?” he asked, gritting his teeth when Undertaker could not even glance at the file for sheer mirth.

“Your butler is really quite something,” he rasped, convulsed. Ciel shoved the sheaf of papers under his nose, a muscle in his fine jaw twitching. Sebastian did not smile either, equally disgusted by the embalmer’s behaviour. It seemed that Undertaker finally took the hint, however, because he leafed through the file and nodded at the two women’s pictures, smiling again and regaining his focus. “Yes, I know them,” he said softly, stroking his chin. “I dressed them and stitched them and made them all pretty, for they were an awful mess.” The Earl frowned and the Undertaker danced to the other end of the room, waltzing an anatomical model with a cutaway of the internal organs in his arms. “Do you know what they all lacked, little one?” Those talons traced a path down the dissected chest of his dummy, settling at a spot over the intestines.

Sebastian began to pay closer attention as his master shook his head at their informer, asking, “What was wrong with them?” Undertaker grinned, flashing his fangs.

“They were dreadfully cut-up,” he mourned, giggling at his little joke. “Both had a red necklace and a slit -” he pointed to the spot on the lower abdomen - “right  _ here _ .” Ciel frowned, still shaking his head, and Undertaker laughed. “You haven’t been taking your female anatomy lessons, Earl?” The latter blushed and looked mortified, Sebastian allowing himself a slight smile.

“Their wombs,” he said, answering for his master. Undertaker brightened up.

“On the money, Mister Butler! Poor souls, they had had their uteri out. I could hardly keep their innards in,” he swooned, breathing the words with a romantic wistfulness. Ciel looked him up and down, disgusted, deep in thought. They had got what they needed.

“Come on, Sebastian,” he said, and with one last look at the Undertaker the butler left, following on his master’s heels. 

As they passed through the door into the daylight that cracked voice drifted out behind them, and Sebastian caught the words, “Be careful, Earl - you have but one soul, one body and one life…take good care of them!” Ciel frowned, perturbed, and climbed into the carriage, ignoring Undertaker’s meaningless platitudes. His butler peered in at the window of that gloomy shop one last time before he climbed onto the box, but even he could not discern the Undertaker’s intentions; the man was an enigma, right down to the very colour of his eyes.

  
  



	4. In the Afternoon: That Butler, Defying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ciel is hard at work solving the case, hung up on the mystery of suspects and motives, when he receives an unexpected visitor keen to hear about the murders. Could this be a gift from the Gods, or is his guest more of a Trojan Horse? Sebastian continues to contradict orders.

Ciel was silent on the ride home, deep in thought. He barely noticed the switch from unpaved to smoothly cobbled streets, let alone when they passed out of the main drag of the city and into the suburbs - his mind was too deeply engrossed in the problem they were trying to solve.  _ A killer well-known to his victims _ , he thought,  _ with a medical precision and an interest in wombs. _ In his lap lay the folder, the various papers sticking out, and he started as they spilled out and onto the floor, snatching up the disordered leaves one by one and examining them furiously as he tried to make sense of things. By luck, he landed on a profile of one of the various suspects, his eyes focusing better as he began scanning the page for information.  _ Dr Francis Tumblety _ , he read,  _ resident of Whitechapel. _ The man seemed to be some sort of American quack with connections to the police, who had already been cautioned on grounds of “gross indecency”. Apparently he collected uteri in jars and was a known misogynist, speaking out often against “fallen women”; Ciel thrust the paper aside in disgust. Annie Chapman would never have allowed such a man into her room without a struggle, all the local prostitutes would have guarded themselves against him. Another page reported that a Polish Jew called Kosminski was known as a local lunatic, misogynist and troublemaker - the Earl tutted, crumpling up the document and tossing it into a corner. Simple xenophobia, that was all; what with the pogroms and the dockers’ strikes, London was seething with hatred for the Jews. It seemed anti-Semitism had crept into the Yard, too - he would have to investigate that separately.  _ Pointless. Tiresome _ .

They arrived back at the townhouse promptly after midday, Ciel’s stomach already growling with hunger, and the butler was quick to let him inside, apologising and saying, “I shall prepare some luncheon, my lord.” The Earl was still lost in thought and only flicked his fingers at Sebastian absentmindedly, allowing him to take his hat and cape and striding into the drawing room. He pulled up short when he saw who awaited him there.

“M-Madam Red?” he spluttered, outraged, ripped so abruptly from his thoughts that he couldn’t help his shock. She smiled pleasantly at him and rose.

“Ciel,” she crooned indulgently, reaching for him and enfolding him in her arms. Unprepared, he did not return the embrace, and when she stepped back his face was stern. “I couldn’t wait another day to see you, I-”

“I’m busy,” he muttered, desperately trying to recapture his train of thought. But Madam Red would have none of it; it seemed she was set on seeing her nephew, whatever the cost.

“You can spare a few minutes for your old aunt, can’t you? Come, Ciel, I’ve been waiting hours for you,” she added, pouting and sinking back into an armchair to fan herself quickly. Something about her manner struck the Earl as off, but he ignored it and sat down with a sigh, the muscles in his face tight.

“Well?” he asked, ringing for Sebastian. “What do you have to say to me so urgently?”

Madam Red dodged the question, equivocating. “Well,” she said brightly, “can’t I visit my only relative without a pretext? I get so lonely, you know, we Dalles must stick together.” She batted a hand playfully at Ciel, but something about the gesture struck him as disingenuous. He leaned against his fist, sullenly glaring out of the window, his stomach growling. This was not how he had intended to spend his afternoon, not at all - he needed to talk over the murders with Sebastian, draw up their suspect list, and his aunt would only get in the way.

“I saw you only yesterday,” he murmured, his nostrils flaring. He did not like visits from relatives at the best of times, let alone unannounced. Madam Red looked flustered and covered it up by checking her reflection in a small hand mirror, neatly filling the silence with nothingy tasks. It was the butler who broke the tension, knocking politely and entering.

“My Lord,” he said, his expression hardly changing when he saw their guest. “You called?” Ciel glanced at him languidly, understanding passing between them without a flicker of emotion disturbing either face.

“Bring us tea and cake,” he ordered, and Sebastian’s eyebrows arched ever so slightly, his flame-coloured eyes gleaming. He sighed, lingering.

“Would it not be better to have something more nourishing, my lord?” Ciel raised an eyebrow, instantly irritated. His lip curled and the butler held his gaze evenly. But the Earl was not going to let his servant order him around anymore that day and his mouth tightened savagely as he repeated his previous request.

“Tea and cake,” he said coldly, and Sebastian bowed low as he did only at his most pissed-off, his mouth curling into a bland, empty smile.

“Yes, my lord.” He retreated from the room and Ciel turned back to his aunt, incapable of polite conversation. There was no small-talk to be made, after all - one did not exchange such niceties with relatives, especially not after they had only just visited and were therefore devoid of good anecdotes to fill the time. It was most irregular of Madam Red to bother him, but then he supposed it was true that they were the only surviving members of the family; Angelina’s husband had died years ago and she had neither children nor other relatives besides him, not since his parents had passed away. Since the death of his mother and father, Ciel had renounced the idea of family altogether, finding it easier to cut that part out of him rather than to try and continue with some semblance of filial affection after the main objects of his love had been so utterly destroyed. Nowadays, he thought little of love at all, except in odd moments such as this one when he was reminded that he still had ties to the world of the living. Lizzie’s visits produced the same effect in him, along with a kind of dangerous hopelessness that recalled the despair of that day - he knew he could never love her the way she wanted him to, and the older he grew the closer their wedding loomed. He almost wished her prim mother and brother would snatch her away once and for all, but a selfish part of him could not bear the idea of being conquered so easily and he would be damned if they thought him inadequate. He still felt something for Lizzie, he knew that much, but his true heart was broken irrevocably and his soul was tainted beyond belief, so much so that even the slightest hint of positive feeling was accompanied by pangs of the greatest misery, so profound that he thought he would drown in it.

His aunt’s attention had a similar but even worse effect, for she had also been instrumental in his upbringing but was an even more direct manifestation of everything he had lost; the kind of love she tried to show him was a sham replacement for the adoration his parents had rained down upon their little boy, the absolute security of attachment that he would never experience again. But apart from her and Lizzie, the Earl had no friends, and so he clung to them both in childishness, in sin, the small, painful part of him that begged to return to infancy trying to sustain that memory long after it had flickered, faded and died. After all, the Queen was no more than a symbol to him, an icon of aristocratic unity, and Lau was one of many connections that he exploited to fulfill his position as a Villainous Noble. Lord Randall and those at the Yard were anything but friends, he did not mix with other families, he had no acquaintances his own age. The only person in his life that stayed by him constantly was Sebastian, unsuitable as an object of any kind of affection, not least because he was a servant, especially since Ciel knew him to be depraved and probably incapable of love and at the same time so secretive that nothing could be made out about his character. It was true that at times Ciel had wondered if his butler had a heart - that was hardly his concern, however. Sebastian was an employee, a mercenary that he had hired to do his bidding, and that was the end of that. Nevermind that he washed the Earl’s body with his own hands, nevermind that he made all his food and dressed him and tucked him into bed at night, nevermind that he was the first face Ciel saw in the morning and the imprint that remained behind closed eyelids in his sleep; Sebastian was a servant, a crutch, no more.

The aforementioned crutch now opened the door and there was a slight chink as he wheeled in the trolley with the china rattling atop it. Ciel regarded the table coldly, not looking up as his butler set down the tea things and the cake stand. He noticed, then, that instead of the usual cupcakes the stand was filled with sandwiches, a few slices of cake at the bottom along with some creampuffs. He gritted his teeth. Sebastian would dare defy him?  _ I did not ask for this _ , he thought faintly, his breathing quickening imperceptibly - but he knew his butler was just waiting for a response, and he could not give him the satisfaction. Sighing, he took one of the cucumber sandwiches and bit into it, his stomach growling most audibly as he swallowed. It was actually quite good, but not what he wanted, not what he had asked for, and even though his appetite overtook his need to assert his control still he felt an angry shiver go through his spine at the thought that the butler had won the battle. He would have to find a way to punish him later, some form of reprimand that was suitably aloof and cruel; he could dock his pay, but he had a feeling that Sebastian did not care much for that.  _ Why does he stay with me? _ Ciel wondered unwillingly, already on his fourth sandwich. He took a sip of his tea and his butler asked, “Will that be all, my lord?”

Ciel did not need to turn around to know the expression of smug satisfaction on his servant’s face. Sebastian’s eyes burned into his back, boring holes in his skin, peeling back layer after layer until he could see right into his soul. The Earl shifted in his seat, settling back languidly. “Leave us, Sebastian,” he said, his voice cold.

The butler bowed and made his exit, the smallest smile tucked up in the corners of his mouth. Ciel turned back to his aunt, who was stirring her tea, her eyes downcast. His mind began to wander back to the case and he thought again of the suspects, of how in hell they were to narrow down the list. Thousands of people passed through that area every day, hundreds of thousands - what on earth were they to do?  _ Why would he cut out their wombs? _ Ciel wondered, the killer’s strange habits returning to his mind. None of the Yard’s suspects measured up because they were known misogynists, which meant both women would surely have avoided them like the plague and screamed for help if they were accosted by them either at home or in the street. On the other hand, the killer had medical knowledge, so only someone educated could have done the job; that narrowed things down considerably, since the prostitutes couldn’t have known many men well-off enough to have studied at such a high level. Still, there was the problem of clients and the potentially bottomless list that could have passed through their lives. And if the motive wasn’t misogyny, then why was he doing it?  _ Something occult? _

“Tell me about this case you’re working on,” Madam Red said, blowing on her tea, and Ciel jumped, jerking out of his reverie. He narrowed his eye at her, wondering how she could have known.

“It’s confidential.” She smiled sardonically, leaning in and shaking her head.

“I know all the gossip in London,” she murmured, her eyes twinkling. “I might have something that could help you.”

Ciel drew in a breath, frowning. She could be right - Madam Red practised medicine, she would know all the nobles that did likewise and all the sordid secrets of the students. Reluctantly, he began to recount to her the facts of the case, only giving her a sketch of what he had found so that she could understand why they were looking for medical students. Madam Red looked interested but her expression became increasingly pained the longer he went on, and when he reached the end of his story she was silent, almost sad. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked, and Ciel balked, caught out. Now she seemed almost desperate, leaning forward and taking his hands. “You’re putting yourself in so much danger,” she breathed, on the point of tears, and Ciel’s eyes widened. “I hate to think of my last living relative in peril.” He looked at her sternly, shocked.

“This is my duty, as the Head of the Phantomhive household.” She looked at him soberly, her red eyes turned down at the corners. “I am bound by my oath to the queen to complete this mission, to carry out her wishes until death.” Madam Red reached out and, before he had time to pull away, grasped his hands, holding them tightly, her own palms pale and cold.

“You could be killed!” Her eyes pleaded with him, hopeless. “This job killed your father, your mother, it is cursed! You must renounce the case, I beg you, you are but a - you are still a child.” Even as she said it, he could see her giving up, and he waited stiffly for her to relinquish his fingers, overcoming his surprise. His face was set in stone, immovable, when he replied.

“I have not thought of turning back before,” he said. “I will not stop now.” He raised his eyes to her face once more, deeming it just about safe, and asked, “What can you tell me about medical practitioners amongst the higher classes with connections to Whitechapel, prostitution or the occult?”

Madam Red settled back into her chair slowly. Unfolding her fan deliberately, she straightened her back, gazing out the window. “All the notables of London are here for the season,” she began, her eyes far away. “The parties and balls will begin soon, with as much fraternising and socialising as possible. Therefore, it is highly likely that a noble could come to London around this time and have a good cover for killing those women.” Ciel nodded, sipping his tea. She turned back to face him, beginning to come to life again. “I know plenty of doctors and medical students and many of them have vices the like of which you have described, but there is one man - just one - that comes to mind when you say those things in conjunction.” Her eyes sparkled and Ciel sat up, leaning forward.

“Who?”

“Montague John Druitt.” She pronounced his name with precision, her lips curling into a strange smile. “He is not a medical student himself, but his family is full of those types and he has much the same knowledge as them. He is brooding, somewhat eccentric, and I have heard dark whispers about him. By all accounts, he is a strange and secretive man; I wouldn't be surprised if he'd frequented places of low morality.” Ciel sat up a little straighter, somewhat disgusted. There was an odd glint in Madam Red’s eye as she added, “He teaches at a boarding school, I am told.” She looked away, leaving the rest unsaid, and Ciel’s lip curled, a cold shiver going through him as he thought of the kind of rituals boys like himself were subjected to in those foul institutions. He had been lucky to avoid a boarding school education, being one of the highest nobility, and, though he had suffered treatment similar to that abominable sort at the hands of his kidnappers, it had been more shortlived. Sighing, he set down his teacup.

“What are these whispers?” Madam Red shrugged, flapping her fan. 

“I don't remember,” she sighed, and Ciel ground his teeth in annoyance. 

“Very well,” he said. “When can we see this Druitt?” Madam Red smiled pleasantly at him.

“I have an invitation to a ball later in the season, which he will certainly attend, if you care to join me.” She flashed the card at him and he took it and examined it, handing it back to her.

“Thank you.” He smiled coldly and his aunt beamed back. “Well, I am very grateful for your visit, Aunt Ann - come again, although do warn me in advance.” She giggled, taking up her umbrella, and he opened the door for her, following her down the stairs. They kissed goodbye, then she was gone, the door closing behind her with a click that echoed through the high-ceilinged hall.

Ciel stood for a moment, then returned to his study, summoning his butler. Sebastian appeared like a shadow, materialising behind him, and the Earl flicked his fingers at him, ordering him wordlessly to clear up the tea-things. Sebastian waited patiently for an explanation, but his master only pretended to peruse a newspaper, ignoring him altogether. Was this to be his punishment? A poor attempt, by all accounts. He took the tray back down to the kitchen and began to wash up when the bell rang. His eyebrow twitched in annoyance - he had only just got his gloves wet and warmed up the water, and now it would go cold and he would have to change clothes - but then he was pulling on his tailcoat and swapping his gloves, ascending the stairs swiftly and silently. “Yes, my lord?”

Ciel chucked the newspaper onto the table. He hadn’t been reading it, after all. “We need to pay a visit,” he said, “to Montague John Druitt.” Sebastian raised his eyebrows.

“I take it you told your aunt about the case, young master?” Ciel looked up, frowning in annoyance.

“Of course. What of it?” Sebastian shook his head, smiling.

“Nothing, my lord.” Ciel watched him suspiciously for another second, but Sebastian’s eyes were closed in servile ecstasy, so he ignored that farce in disgust, letting out a long sigh and a groan as he stretched. The butler cracked open an eye as he did so, observing the cat-like palpitations of his master’s limbs, the delicate arch of his back and his visceral moan of discomfort. The lanky teenager really was quite cute when he let himself go. Then those blue eyes were open again and Sebastian returned to his indifferent discretion, waiting until his master explained the rest of his reasoning. He did not have to linger long; Ciel was eager to speak his thoughts aloud.

“The killer had to have some medical knowledge, so they can’t have been uneducated,” he said, rolling his shoulders. “That means they probably weren’t a resident of Whitechapel themselves but had connections there, since most of those in the area live in poverty without access to education. Neither woman would have had many acquaintances in the higher classes of society, unless of course they were clients - their clientele is a problem for us. Nevertheless, the killer could not have been an open misogynist, since the victims would have kept their distance and had time to scream, therefore the Yard’s summary of suspects is redundant.” Sebastian nodded, standing silently. “We must therefore consider other motives than misogyny, though of course it could still be a factor; the removal of the womb points to the occult. I asked my aunt to tell me of any medical practitioners or students she knew with connections to Whitechapel, prostitution or cults and she mentioned Montague John Druitt. When the season begins in a fortnight’s time there will be a ball to which she has invited us which he will attend, but I want to interview him sooner.” The butler appraised his master, waiting for him to finish. “If we can get alibis from him then we’ll rule him out - if not, we’ll investigate the idea of a secret society at the ball, since secret meetings often occur undercover of such events.” Sebastian nodded and Ciel got to his feet. “Compile a list of all those potentially linked to the murders, ruling out those with alibis for both nights; I expect it to be ready by the end of the week.” The butler bowed low, pressing his hand to his heart.

“Yes, my lord.” He straightened up, seeing that the Earl had something more he wanted to say. Ciel turned that blazing blue gaze on him and spoke coldly, carelessly dropping the remark into the silence.

“Oh, and Sebastian - don’t ever test me again. I do not wish to see my orders disobeyed, especially not in the presence of guests.” Sebastian raised his eyebrows into two thin arches, bowing again but keeping his liquid topaz eyes fixed on his master the whole time. Ciel suffered that glare contemptuously, satisfied that his servant was chastened, and walked out of the room. “I’ll be in my study,” he said, his voice drifting back over his shoulder. Sebastian waited until he heard the door shut upstairs, then turned on his heel and left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Google docs was down this morning and I nearly lost two chapters of this fucking thing...whew. In future, it's safe to say I'm downloading it and storing it everywhere I can, because I'm way too invested in this project. (I had a little heart attack, nearly jumped of the roof of my house and spent an hour playing angsty klezmer and sad Bach on violin to try and exorcise my despair, you're welcome). I apologise if you came to this fic for smut and found plot, but I guess that's just the way it goes - my best rec for Sebaciel smut is Amanitus, truly the most wonderful fanfic writer. Also, I know Ciel dismisses Francis Tumblety as an irrelevant suspect at the start of this chapter, but in case you're interested, I definitely think Tumblety was the real Jack the Ripper. I mean, wombs in jars?! See you next week ;)


	5. In the daytime: That Butler, In Disguise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ciel and Sebastian employ some subterfuge to investigate their prime suspect. Things don't quite go as planned and both servant and master are reminded of their own tensions as they try to navigating the twists and turns of a complicated case, a case that will ultimately throw them together more chaotically than ever.

They set out to Druitt’s place together. As their prime suspect, Druitt was of particular interest to Ciel, and he felt it right that he did not put his dog on too long a lead lest he run away with himself, so this time, the Earl went with his butler. Sebastian needed watching and Ciel did not think it too onerous to himself; his servant could compile the rest of the suspect list alone. Still, the ruse they were using to get into Druitt’s company was tiring -  _ can’t be helped _ , he thought. They had to be in disguise, otherwise the suspect might smell a rat. The carriage came to a stop and Ciel turned towards the door. They were parked in a by-street, hidden down the side of a smart brick house with white windowframes and a portico in the cheap, Grecian style popular among nobles; thus far, Madam Red’s information had been correct.

Sebastian got down from the box and opened the door. Ciel stepped out, surveying the street. It was a quiet, handsome area with a row of houses on one side and a cricket green opposite, an air of wealth and comfort pleasantly pervading all. Druitt’s accommodation was in the boarding school where he worked and Ciel thought he glimpsed a young man’s face behind the curtains in the front room as they approached the house, Sebastian rapping smartly on the door-knocker. The door was opened almost immediately by a matronly woman in an apron, at once motherly and haughty, her grey hair tied back tightly beneath a posh maid’s cap. She nodded to them at once when she saw them, ushering them inside. “Mr Michaelis junior and senior, I presume,” she said, smiling stiffly at the two of them. Sebastian nodded, allowing her to take his coat and hat. “I’ll go announce you to the Headmaster, sir.” A muscle in Ciel’s jaw twitched as he handed her his hat but he kept his head bowed, maintaining the disguise. His butler’s eyes slid over him and he felt that warm, insolent gaze, his hands twitching at his sides. The maid glanced back at them over her shoulder as she bustled towards the staircase.

“Are you sure this will work?” The Earl glanced up at his butler, murmuring in an undertone, “We’re too conspicuous, she won’t believe you’re my father.”

Sebastian’s lips twitched, but he kept his calm. “Humans see what they want to see. If we tell them we’re related, they’ll say the resemblance is uncanny.” Ciel’s eyebrow twitched in annoyance and his butler turned his smirk on him, enjoying how much it discomfited his master to feel he was in any way associated with his servant.

“Why are we talking to the Headmaster anyway?” he asked, crossing his arms and slouching. Sebastian tutted.

“Stand up straight and stop sulking.” His tone of command had Ciel instantly obeying, but when he realised he had just capitulated to an order from his servant the air between them seemed to crackle with his anger. Something about Sebastian’s voice was so strict that it forced him to submit - it was almost impossible not to do as he said, and sometimes the Earl found himself adjusting his posture or checking his behaviour when he heard his butler shouting at the servants, only to realise it was not he himself who was being rebuked. Sebastian never raised his voice around him and rarely broke rank to give him an imperative; he knew his place. Still, in their current situation his butler had perfect license to do whatever he could to sustain the disguise, a fact that made Ciel distinctly uncomfortable. The Earl balled his hands into fists, turning with fury to his servant, whose equilibrium remained true though his eyes were bright - much too bright - and Sebastian calmly returned his glance, the flames in his gaze flaring up. They were interrupted by a heavy footstep on the stairs, and both composed themselves just in time to look up and see a venerable man in an old-fashioned suit descending from the upper landing.

“Mr Michaelis!” The old man opened his hands expansively, looking at Sebastian and entirely ignoring the boy beside him. “I received your letter; very prompt and to the point, so I shan’t waste niceties on you.” He smiled jovially through his moustache, shaking Sebastian’s hand and looking down at Ciel. “Come join me in my study, if you please.” Sebastian smiled and nodded and Ciel trailed behind them, glancing from one to the other, disconcerted by the way adults talked to each other and utterly ignored him when he was not in role as the Earl. Was this how Sebastian dealt with the plethora of shopkeepers and head stewards and underworld crooks he came across in his work? Was this how he talked to Tanaka? They crossed the hallway and entered a large room occupied by a cedarwood desk and a fine set of old bookshelves filled with unopened tomes - in spite of his job, it seemed the Headmaster was not a man of much learning himself.

“So,” the old man said, settling into a leather armchair, “you wanted to see me about procuring a place at my school?” Sebastian nodded, gesturing to Ciel.

“My son is now a boy of sixteen,” he began, and Ciel had to stop himself from gagging. “He previously boarded at a school outside of London, near our house in the country.” Ciel kept his face politely bland, listening to his servant’s lies. “We felt, however, that that place was...inadequate.” A flicker of understanding passed between the two adults which almost had Ciel rolling his eyes. “I myself have been away for most of the summer on a tiresome business trip to the Indies, so I apologise for approaching you so close to the start of the school term - it is most unfortunate. However, your sixthform was highly recommended by a family friend and I wondered if my son might enrol.” The Headmaster nodded, stroking his bristly chin.

“That’s all well and good. You have a reference for him?” Sebastian produced a perfectly forged piece of paper from his breast pocket and handed it over; the Headmaster scanned through it, completely taken in. He raised his eyebrows, impressed. “Remarkable,” he said, and Ciel wondered sourly just what Sebastian had written on his fake school report.  _ Something ridiculous, probably _ , he thought sourly, his old churlishness reasserting itself. Really, he didn’t like it when Sebastian played the adult - he himself was hardly a child, he was old enough to be treated with the proper respect he deserved. The Headmaster glanced between them, peering over the rim of his spectacles, and Ciel sat up a little straighter, pushing his hair out of his eyes. The old man inspected him severely. “You’ll have to work hard here, you know,” he said seriously, his tone quite changed. “No slacking off, no misbehaving.” Ciel nodded vigorously, and the old man lifted his chin, sitting back with a satisfied air.

“Well then,” he said, glancing between the two of them. “We’ll send in the bill for the term once he’s here and settled in.” He was still peering at the two of them oddly and suddenly Ciel tensed, wondering if the old man had seen through their disguise. “You know, you look rather young for his father,” he remarked mildly, nodding from Sebastian to Ciel. The butler gave one of his dazzling smiles, chuckling politely.

“People often say that,” he said, sighing. Ciel’s nostrils flared -  _ he’s overdoing it a bit. _ “The truth is, my wife passed away when my boy was still quite young, so I’ve had to have quite a hand in his upbringing.” Ciel’s eyes slid to the side, covertly watching him. What was his butler playing at? This was utterly unnecessary, if anything he was arousing yet more suspicion. But the man on the other side of the desk had become misty-eyed all of a sudden, staring off into the distance.

“You are a widower?” he asked, nodding slightly. “I myself have had that misfortune. My condolences.”

“And mine,” Sebastian replied smoothly, smiling slightly. Ciel wondered with disgust why no one saw through that kindly commiseration to the contempt and insolence that lurked beneath; evidently, most people were stupid enough to believe that Sebastian really did have good intentions.  _ Bollocks. _ The old man folded his hands on his paunch, smiling at the two of them.

“Is there anything more I can do for you?” he asked, still lost in his bout of nostalgia. Sebastian raised his eyes slightly and Ciel made sure to remain still, listening intently.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” the butler began, “there is someone here we’d like to see. The son of an old friend of the family, we...haven’t seen him in a long time.” The Headmaster raised his eyebrows, a little more on his guard.

“Oh? Well, if it’s one of the students -”

“He’s a teacher, actually,” Sebastian replied quickly, moving in for the kill. “His father was called Druitt.” There was a sharp intake of breath from the old man on the other side of the desk and he shook his head, a thundercloud gathering on his brow.

“I’m afraid not,” he said rather thickly, frowning deeply. He moved a few things around on his desk and recrossed his legs, discomfited. “He doesn’t work here anymore.”

Sebastian’s ears pricked up, and he raised his eyebrows. “Oh?” The Headmaster glanced up resentfully.

“Surely you must have heard?” The agony in the old man’s wheezing was quite clear, the apoplectic anger. Ciel leaned forward, every muscle in his body tensed. What had happened to Montague John Druitt? The Headmaster let out a long sigh that caught in his throat, which he cleared gruffly. “Dismissed, about a fortnight ago.” Ciel’s eyes widened in shock and he had to hold himself still by force as the old man’s eyes switched to him, looking at him more closely. He opened his mouth to ask why but Sebastian put a hand on his knee and gripped it tightly under the desk so he kept quiet, surprised, trying not to squirm. Sebastian’s fingers were warm, very warm, his hold hard enough to leave bruises. It was clear what he meant to say:  _ shut up. _ Ciel shut his mouth with a snap, inwardly furious at having obeyed another order from his servant. How long would this go on? When had Sebastian begun to transgress the boundaries of their relationship so impertinently - had he always been this devious?

“My apologies,” Sebastian said at length, filling the silence. The old man watched him warily, beginning to lower his guard. “I had no idea.” He turned to Ciel and finally, finally let go of his leg, Ciel’s knee still burning from the touch and his nerves jangling with unease. Allowing himself a discreet squirm as he got to his feet, Ciel shook hands with the Headmaster after Sebastian, following him out into the corridor. The door shut behind them and the Earl turned to his servant.

“Se-” he began, but his butler’s eyes flashed at him and so he shut his mouth again, letting out an exasperated sigh. Gritting his teeth, only just succeeding in repressing a blush, he said, “Father?” Sebastian’s eyes danced with amusement.

“Yes, my boy?” Ciel didn’t like that possessive pronoun one bit. He glanced along the corridor and lowered his voice with a meaningful glance.

“Shouldn’t we check Druitt’s room before we go?” But Sebastian shook his head. 

“In the present situation I do not believe that would be advisable,” he murmured, glancing down the stairs at the maid in the hallway and then to the faces peeping out from behind dorm doors. Ciel nodded, understanding, and so the two of them descended the stairs in silence, retrieving their coats and hats and ducking out into the autumn morning. Once inside the carriage, Sebastian safely on the box, Ciel clenched his fists. It seemed Druitt would elude them, then, though he still didn’t have an alibi for either night. They would have to try another tactic; Madam Red’s ball would be of no use now, for if Druitt was in disgrace he would not have the gall to turn up to society functions. Frustrated, the Earl flexed his fingers, absentmindedly running his hand over his knee where a bruise was beginning to form.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment and leave kudos if you enjoyed, I had a lot of fun writing this one. I'm going pretty off-piste in terms of how similar this will be to the original story because I wanted to try out a more realistic interpretation. Ciel doesn't know what he's got himself into...


	6. At Noon: That Butler, Suggesting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ciel mulls over the Jack the Ripper case over dinner, wondering what he is missing. Sebastian seems to know something he doesn't, and begins making suggestions about their prime suspect, Druitt, that open up a whole other avenue of questioning...

Ciel slammed his fist down upon the table, twisting his fingers in the white cloth. Their prime suspect had got away and now he might be anywhere - Druitt had evaded them already, anticipated their coming and fled in spite of everything. Something about the circumstances seemed off, something was wrong, and he couldn’t see the way forward. It worried him, though he would never have admitted it in a million years; the facade of power and control that he had built up around himself as the Queen’s Guarddog was beginning to slip, and though he had always known that one day he might find a case that was too much for him, he had chosen not to believe it. He couldn’t stop now, now that he was in so deep - he had to crack this case, he had to destroy the Ripper! A knife gleamed in his grip and he clenched his hand around it, only just managing to control his temper. His fury needed a few more restrictions; he had promised himself he would never act impulsively again when he had chosen this new way of life, and he had to stick to his word.  _ I will be calm and collected _ , he told himself,  _ I will be noble and distant _ . This was his mantra, his raison d’être. He refused to let go of this case - he would follow through calmly and coldly and deduce who the killer really was, then eliminate him.

His butler watched him thoughtfully, a white cloth over his arm as he waited on his master. It seemed the Earl had hit a brick wall, his lack of imagination stymying him. Sebastian knew very well that his master would never admit to this weakness but it was unfortunate, seeing as he himself could likely have found Druitt and even, perhaps, ruled him out, had his master deigned to ask him his opinion; but there it was, their whole problem, the final problem.  _ Pride. _ Ciel’s greatest weakness was his pride, and it often blinded him. He set the plate down on the table in front of his little lord, saying, “Today’s luncheon is a veal cutlet in thyme and butter sauce.” The earl barely looked up, chewing on the inside of his cheek instead of his food. Sebastian sighed, loud enough that that piercing blue eye turned on him.

“What?” Ciel looked sullen, stubborn, the sharp line of his jaw tight, his half-full lips pouting. That little mark beneath his eye that he shared with his father only served to accentuate the disdainful, sorrowful downwards sweep of his eyelashes, his heavy eyelids shuttering his mind to the world. The butler’s expression was all polite compliance but his eyes burned red, a scorching scarlet that made his master frown.

“Nothing, my lord,” Sebastian purred, deferring coolly. He did not have to give his master any information unless asked for it explicitly - he would not lie to him, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t withhold his thoughts until interrogated. “You appear to be out of sorts. Perhaps you might feel better if you ate something.

“Damn it!” Ciel got to his feet and flung his chair away from him so violently that it hit the ground. The butler’s eyebrows rose imperceptibly, arching slightly, his eyes narrowing. The Earl began to pace, troubled, and made a break for the door. “Let me go,” he growled as Sebastian stepped into his path, and a smile twitched at the corners of the servant’s mouth as he listened to his master’s ferocity.

“Where will you go, my lord?” Sebastian asked mildly. Ciel ground his teeth, glaring into his butler’s eyes. Once again, Sebastian felt a slight shiver of surprise at how tall his master had grown. The Earl’s answer was incoherent, marked only by arrogance and anger.

“Somewhere else,” he muttered, trying to push past his butler. “Back to Druitt’s place, to Whitechapel, to -”

“You won’t find him there,” Sebastian said sardonically, cutting off his master’s exit with both hands on his shoulders, holding him in place. Ciel chafed like an unbroken colt, baring his teeth in an uncharacteristic expression of emotion. He really was rather worked-up over this case. Sebastian smiled slightly at him, politely offering him a seat. The Earl sat down with the air of a criminal on the scaffold, sliding into his seat with defiant dignity. He was listening, though, returned to rationality remarkably quickly, and Sebastian commended his self-possession.

“Since you seem to know so much, where do  _ you _ think he is?” Ciel deigned to slice off a corner of his cutlet, which was now growing cold, and slip it into his mouth. Sebastian bowed, pressing a hand to his heart.

“My lord, last night while I was seeking Druitt’s address I discovered that he was not just a schoolmaster.” Ciel frowned, tilting his head on one side.

“Oh?” He feigned disinterest, but now he was eating properly and the butler took it as a sign of absentmindedness, given how much he had sought to defy his hunger before. He nodded, his hands behind his back.

“Five years ago Druitt passed the exam to serve at the bar. He was called up and has since acted as a barrister on several cases.” Ciel sipped from his glass, considering this. “He has chambers at 9 King’s Bench Walk in the Inner Temple. If he is anywhere at the present moment, it is most likely there, since that is his only other accommodation.” The Earl’s blue eye widened and he turned abruptly to his butler.

“We must go at once,” he said, already getting to his feet, but Sebastian stayed where he was. When Ciel noticed this he added, “What?”

“With your leave, Lord,” Sebastian said, “I think it wise to wait. Such a visit would only arouse Druitt’s suspicions and send him into hiding, and without a warrant we cannot arrest him. We do not have sufficient evidence at this time to act in such a way, so I think it advisory that we take stock. I have yet to complete my suspect list, and we are currently pursuing only one line of inquiry.” Ciel sat back down with a sigh, nodding.

“Hurry up that list,” he said, placing his knife and fork together on his plate. “Find out why Druitt was dismissed from the school.” Sebastian’s lips curled slightly at the corners.

“I thought it was quite clear why Druitt was dismissed.” The Earl turned on him sharply, his sapphire gaze searching, disapproving. Sebastian seemed a little too amused. “I did not think we needed any more proof.”

Ciel let out a noncommittal hmph. He didn’t like missing things anymore than he liked that little smirk on his butler’s lips. He raised an eyebrow, remaining silent, so Sebastian went on, “Did you see the face at the window when we arrived?”

The Earl frowned. “A boy,” he remarked dismissively. “What of it?” 

Sebastian almost giggled. “And on the way out? He was watching us on the stairs.”

“Oh, really.” Ciel’s reply was vague; he had not seen any child on the way out, so fixated had he been upon the idea of Druitt’s whereabouts and the burn of Sebastian’s mark upon his knee. The butler let out a sigh, placing his master’s dessert in front of him while he waited.

“Really, young master, I would have thought that so obvious a detail would not have escaped your penetrating gaze.” Ciel sat up sharply at that ironical tone, by now indignant. Sebastian kept his eyes lowered as he poured his master’s tea. “Druitt was dismissed for...indecency. I imagine the student we saw hanging around the hallway was his co-conspirator, or victim, in this affair.” The Earl blushed bright red, fixing his eyes on his plate. Suddenly he was not hungry. An uncomfortable, light-headed warmth overcame him and he struggled for breath, trying to keep his composure at this unusual, unpleasant sensation. Sebastian tittered, satisfied that he had delivered the killing blow. The Earl knew so little of the things that mattered, it was almost laughable. He had read a fair few of the books in his father’s vast library, that was true, so he was theoretically informed, but the truth of the matter was that such things were a mystery for him. Sebastian could forgive, therefore, this little oversight, if only once - his master would do well to remember the truth in his presence. The Earl still did not know what it was that Sebastian had gone to prison for, the reason he should still be there, by rights, and Sebastian would keep it that way for as long as possible. Perhaps the young master was more shockable than he had initially expected; always better to keep him in the dark.

Ciel had been swirling his tea and sipping it slowly, but now he lifted his head, an idea forming in his mind. He smiled slightly and his butler caught the edge of that dangerous look, an expression that wasn’t to be trusted. He turned enquiringly to his master, who licked the last crumbs from the cake-fork. 

“We could set a trap for him,” he said, and Sebastian raised an eyebrow. Ciel was all sweetness. “You can forge handwriting, can’t you?”

The butler nodded slowly. “A Phantomhive butler who can’t do that much isn’t worth his salt,” he replied smoothly, and Ciel nodded, satisfied.

“Good. Then I have a commission for you,” he said, and his servant’s eyebrows arched imperceptibly. “We are going to perform a little deception on Druitt, to see if you’re right. Find some letters or workbooks belonging to that boy you mentioned and buy paper and ink to match. While you’re out, you can continue to compile a suspect list, too.” His smile dropped, but the diabolic light still lingered in his eye. Sebastian’s lips curved upwards at the corners as he began to understand. This game was turning out to be the best yet; only time would tell which of them ended up on top.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well well well here we are again. hehehe you can see where this is going i'm sure ;) Honestly the Druitt thing is probably true but the historical facts are quite vague and so I am diverging from both the manga and the truth a lot, but who cares. Weirdly enough, I was influenced by the playwright Ibsen for this - who knew such literary aspirations could be reduced to such smut...


	7. At Midnight: That Butler, Consoling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ciel struggles with nightmares and ponders his past and his problems. The Jack the Ripper case has stirred up something hidden, something deep within him, and now he cannot put the genie back in the bottle....

Ciel couldn’t get to sleep that night. He struggled to sleep most nights, what with his belligerent memory, the constant threat of his enemies and the big, empty house that seemed to echo with shadows of the past - but tonight it was worse, for whatever reason. Maybe it was something to do with the case, maybe Ciel was simply restless, maybe he was hungry; innumerable motives, stirring beneath the surface, muddying the waters, making it impossible to understand even his own mind. It would be one thing if the cerebral were separate from the corporeal, and Ciel liked to pretend that it was, but he knew in his heart that the interplay between mind and body was essential and that he was powerless against such natural force. Whatever he thought of Sebastian’s lessons, he had learned that much from him. How separate were the butler’s desires from his needs? Where did ego and id diverge? Did everyone have a higher self, or were all tainted irrevocably by their baseness?

He shifted beneath the covers and turned over, trying to flatten himself into the mattress, hugging his pillow. It was no good - the fire had been banked too high, it was too warm in the room for him to sleep. Initially, he resisted getting up and simply remained there, supine, awkwardly spread-eagled with his face pressed into the pillow in denial; he found, however, that his limbs were too long to rest in that position without him getting pins-and-needles, and his hand knocked against the headboard so that he looked up and bumped the top of his skull, not realising how close he was to the end of the bed. These days, the four-poster that had once seemed huge was barely big enough to accommodate him, for while it stretched out evenly on either side he no longer curled up into a ball when he slept but sprawled, in the manner of all adolescents, and always managed to get a dead leg or dead arm or bruise himself on the bedposts or become tangled in the curtains, thrashing about like a lunatic - in short, he had grown too big for the queen-sized affair. His bed was an antique, a relic of the Phantomhives’, so there was no question of his replacing it with a new one from a shop; he would have to find something of equal quality and value if he was to be satisfied. There were many beds in his house, enough bedrooms to accommodate hundreds of guests at once, but he did not care to try them, for they were surely inferior. There was only one other bed in the house that he had not tried that might suit, and he did not dare go near it.

His father had been as tall as he was now, perhaps a little taller. The master bedroom of the house remained clean and orderly, attended to by Sebastian and the other servants, but Ciel had not set foot in it for years. He slept in what might be known as the mistress bedroom, which had belonged to his mother before she and the previous Earl had been married, during their engagement. Before that, it had been in the possession of some dowager aunt of his father’s, so Ciel felt it was a compromise between relative anonymity and prestige which he could live with. Still, he might try his father’s bed. If he had the sheets washed thoroughly perhaps they might cease to smell of ash, perhaps the all-pervading odour of smoke that had filled each room in the manor would leave him, finish following him in his waking and sleeping hours, filling his nose with soot and his lungs with dust, irritating them, spoiling his leather chair and velvet jackets and every hanging and drape in the vast building. When he had mentioned this once to Sebastian in an offhand manner, the butler had seemed surprised, and then thoughtful in a way that Ciel didn’t like. They had never spoken about it again, but the Earl sensed that his servant had withheld the truth from him: namely, that the manor did not smell of smoke at all. Nothing had been salvageable from the ashes of his home, nothing at all. Sebastian had had it rebuilt over a year, painstakingly, accruing exact replicas of most of the furniture with surprising ease, even family heirlooms. It turned out that, prior to its burning, the manor had been gutted of everything of worth, which was almost everything in it. So if Ciel did smell smoke, it was a curse that he alone had to bear, the curse that had been passed down to him along with his ring and the family name.

He flung himself over onto his back and shoved the duvet aside. The heavy quilt rustled, the bed curtains still. He could feel how hot his cheeks were in the darkness, his eyelids burning. Sebastian had reassembled his house and belongings shockingly quickly and even Ciel had been startled, though he had been the one to order it in the first place. It was not that Sebastian was superhuman - far from it - his superpower, if he had one, was criminality, an ease of movement that came with unscrupulousness. It had been no coincidence that he had been there to pull Ciel from the rubble during the manor’s destruction, no accident that he had been allowed into the room where that unspeakable ritual had been performed. Sebastian had been part of the gang that had sought to destroy the Phantomhive family, but for one reason or another, he had changed allegiance. It hadn’t been pity that had made him switch sides, Ciel knew that much, because he had himself offered the criminal a large sum and protection from the law in exchange for his help. He would have liked to think that it had been his quick-thinking and bargaining skills that had got him out of that hellhole, but he felt that money and liberty weren’t really enough to sway a man like Sebastian. Perhaps he had seen something in the Earl, an opportunity, a potential for corruption or cruelty or vindictiveness in the child that so boldly ordered him to “kill them all”; perhaps that had attracted him. More and more often of late, the question had occupied Ciel, circling round and round in his head in the small hours of the morning, inextricably tied to their current case.  _ Why did he choose me? _ When Sebastian had taken out a gun and shot as many of the cult as he had had bullets, when he had drawn his knife and stabbed those who resisted, snapped the necks of those who fled, crushed their heads underfoot, when he had burned the building and unshackled Ciel, what energy had driven him? What darkness was hidden away inside his heart?

Ciel was almost certain he would never know. The price of such knowledge would be too high, and besides, it was useless. To know wouldn’t make things better - knowledge couldn’t change the past, he understood that. Hindsight and posterity were redundant things, relegated to the realm of fools and old people. So why did he continue to seek his revenge? He had claimed before that it was not revenge that drove him to search for his parents' killers, that it was simply a desire to see his aggressors as humiliated and undone as he had been, but that sounded an awful lot like revenge. His desires were not purely sadistic, either, nor founded on optimism; he did not believe in a world without an underworld and he did not think it possible to truly put an end to crime. Social change might do it, but he wasn’t interested in that - as long as he sat at the top of the pile, he had no desire to change its structure beneath him. Why did he pursue these criminals, then? Ciel ran a hand through his hair, sick and tired of his feverish mind. Always questions, always more questions, just when he needed to go to sleep. Exhaustion would not serve him well in the upcoming days; he was going to be busy.  _ Why, though? Why do I do what I know to be pointless? _

He was the Queen’s Guarddog. That was part of it, a big part. It was his job, a title that came with his family name. He regarded it as a curse and it was true that he took no real pride in doing his duty, though it did give him the momentary satisfaction of self-importance. Still, he didn’t really have all that much faith in the English aristocracy, nor the monarchy; he had seen both up close and neither held up under scrutiny, since the aristocracy was as false and villainous as the Underworld, even more so, and the royal family was just an extension of those intrigues. All around him, everywhere he looked, spiders were spinning their webs, trying to set traps for each other and extend their reach and encompass the world in their net. It was tiresome, all this scheming, but it seemed to be the very thing that constituted life. Perhaps that was why he did this, then - he was simply another dumb arachnid spinning his web, because it was in his nature and capacity to do so.  _ How dull, _ he thought, and swung his legs over the side of the bed, searching for the gap in the curtains.  _ I am no more than a product of genetics and conditioning. _

The carpet was warm under his bare feet. Ciel crossed the floor to the fireplace, regarded the warm, lightless embers with contempt, then turned to the window, stepping up to the vast hangings. He felt a vague fear as he regarded them, a habitual paranoia - the apprehension of what might be behind - but then he flung them wide and allowed the moonlight to flood the room, finding those high panes as clear and clean as ever and empty of shadows. Silver spilled from exterior to interior, inundating the dark chamber, illuminating everything in haunting monochrome. Ciel liked the abstract extremes that moonlight lent the world; black and white was comforting, devoid of shocking colour, warping shape and defining everything as one thing or another, adding a different kind of immutability to a world that suddenly seemed dead. Perhaps that was another reason why he hunted down the rulers of the underworld - he hated life, and if scheming was the very stuff of life then he would do his utmost to put an end to it. He and Sebastian had that in common, he could tell. The butler, for all his coarse upbringing, adored form, aesthetics, lifeless, meaningless things that existed solely because of tradition. Though he purported to adore destruction, Ciel’s servant seemed to lean more towards preservation in his affections; he liked to bottle things up and conserve them, keep them suspended for as long as possible. The bird in the bell jar could flutter around as much as it pleased, but it would be infinitely more beautiful in death. As much as Ciel hated Undertaker, he wondered if that was also why the man adored death.  _ We are a queer bunch _ , he thought  disgustedly.

Why did he long for death? Why did black and white please him so? Ciel liked control, that was all. Ever since that day, that month, the month that had never been, the month spent in the darkness that stank of shit and piss, surrounded by sweating bodies, the indignity of exposure and abuse and physical pain, the psychological impact of corporeal torture - Ciel detested his own physical reality more than words could express. It was stupid to aspire to anything more than what he was, so he did not try to, but if the option of evading all kinds of physical need and contact had been less fanciful Ciel would have taken it without a second thought. He abhorred his body and everything that reminded him of it; sports, hunger, physical contact. Even the word was enough to make the bile rise in his throat. The idea of being touched like  _ that _ was unspeakable, the very suggestion of it toxic. Perhaps that was why the Druitt case was so disgusting to him, when he thought about it - a man guilty of sexual misconduct, the degrading reality of the prostitutes and their profession and the grotesque dissection that had been performed on them, the whole farce and interplay of sex and death and vulnerability and the physical, the bestial - Ciel gagged, clutching at the windowsill.  _ Out there _ , he thought, surveying the roofs of London,  _ somewhere out there is Druitt and his next victim and the boy Sebastian thinks he sodomised _ . And besides him there were thousands of others, thousands of sinners and saints copulating and killing and  _ living _ in thousands of differents houses from manors to tenements, all of them tainted, all of them base and animalistic, not a single one pure. Ciel wished once again for that cleansing fire with which Sebastian had destroyed all evidence of his torture, the temptation to torch London irresistible. All that noise and dirt and life; it was confusing, toxic, overabundant, it needed culling. It was not even the people themselves he hated, but the whole institution of humanity and their stupidity - descended from apes and believing themselves the creations of a God that did not exist, going about their everyday lives trying to exercise some control, acting in earnestness or hypocrisy but still  _ acting _ , always  _ acting _ , always  _ doing stuff. _ Why did they have to do that?  _ Stuff? _

_ I wish they would stop. _ Ciel imagined for a moment the sweep of flame that would devour them, the silence that would follow. It would be awesome, terrible, pure in every sense of the word - and yet the very act of erasing them would taint the deed and the cycle would only begin again. Life and sin were like lichen, a symbiotic combination of organisms that could not exist without the other, at once predatory and mutually dependent. And the worst part for Ciel was that he was not exempt, whatever he might think; he would always be one of them. He had his sins and his bodily needs and his trauma and delusions, he had his desires and duties and friends and family, however much he tried to eradicate them, however much he tried to shape his own destiny. He, too, was dependent, though it repelled him to admit it - his symbiotic predator was Sebastian. Together, they preyed and were preyed upon and diverged and fused, constantly dancing around one another, testing the boundaries but ultimately locked in the same position of interdependence forever. If Sebastian left Ciel, he would be arrested; he might go to prison for life, or, depending on how bad and numerous his crimes were, he might be hanged. As for Ciel, without his butler he was useless - without Sebastian, he would be helpless against his enemies and they would come down upon him and destroy him, consuming him like the dammed-up tide consumes the village at the bottom of the valley when it rains. The thought that he was trapped with Sebastian for the rest of his life was terrifying, suffocating, enough to make him grip the windowsill till his knuckles went white, enough to bring Ciel to his knees. He fell to the ground and slumped against the wall, exhausted, discombobulated, confused and disoriented by sleeplessness. All he could do was count to ten and breathe deeply, trying to dispel the sense that the world was crashing down around him.

By the end of the week, they’d have a full suspect list. The thought was an anchor and Ciel grasped it eagerly. Sebastian would obey him and he would catch the Ripper, whatever it took. He would deal with the killer and in no time at all they’d be dead.  _ Dead. _ He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, shakily. His blood pressure was returning to normal, his heartbeat slowing, his temperature levelling out as his cheek grew cool. Now he was drowsy, his head heavy, and so he tried to crawl back to bed but was lifted into the air by strong arms and carried there instead. He let himself be held, limp in his butler’s arms, the familiar feel of gloved fingers pressing into his skin and that even stride lulling him. It felt like floating, or flying - Ciel tried to keep his head upright but it was simply too heavy for his slender neck, and dropped against his butler’s jacket. It was a long time since Sebastian had carried him like this, but Ciel could not object now. Sebastian placed him on his bed and tucked him under the covers, turning to the window and lifting the sash. “I had no idea the room was so warm,” he said in a low voice, fixing the open window in place. “It was most remiss of me to allow the heat to build.”

Ciel tried to reply, but his jaw was too relaxed and he was lying on his side. Sebastian carried on softly, talking to himself. “If the young master insists on sitting out of bed he will catch a cold,” he said, his baritone sonorous. “Without sleep, I fear your case-solving faculties will be greatly impaired.” Ciel moaned sleepily, unable even to mumble a coherent response but feeling that he had conveyed his thoughts nonetheless. He wondered when Sebastian had come into the room - before or after he fell to the floor? It didn’t matter now. The butler closed the curtains and the sliver of moonlight disappeared, then he turned to the drapes around the bed. There was a moment where he looked in at Ciel, and the boy found that he could not look away from the low smoulder in those topaz eyes, so tired that he could not move or think. Sebastian contemplated the pair of sapphire eyes, burning hotly, glazed over entirely, the pink mouth below them hanging open, a thread of saliva running down that sharp chin. Then he pulled the hangings shut with a soft swish, and Ciel listened to his muffled footstep and the click of the door as he left the room, and closed his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "a queer bunch" - I'm so subtle...thank you for all the kudos, please leave a comment if you have any requests, concerns, maniacal desires etc. I am enjoying this very much, and we are almost (I think) halfway there...


	8. The Following Morning: That Butler, Investigating

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ciel is eager to be on his own and Sebastian has work to do in the morning, so the butler goes into town to do a little investigating. He ruminates on his situation and his relationship with his master while carrying out his orders, following every lead he can, and then pursuing an extra line of inquiry of his own...

Sebastian woke him early the next morning, accompanied by the rattle of the breakfast tray. Ciel found his head was thick with sleep and heavy with tiredness, still discombobulated after his bout of insomnia. He dimly remembered his mind racing through Druitt and Sebastian and a stream of other thoughts, but what had seemed important last night had melted away in the morning like mist, so now he levered himself upright with his fists and stretched, lost in his body temporarily as he tried to exorcise all stiffness, then returning to reality to find Sebastian watching him. The butler presented his breakfast things with a bow and Ciel reached for his tea, finding it as perfectly scented as ever, letting out a deep sigh. He was unusually quiet today and it seemed his servant noticed, for he remarked, “You had a late night last night, my lord.” 

It was not a question in-and-of-itself, but the Earl could sense the query behind it and did not reply immediately.  “Have you purchased the stationery I ordered?” he asked, countering Sebastian’s attempt with a change of subject. 

The butler raised an eyebrow but went along with things.  “Not yet, my lord. I intended to do so in town today, whilst investigating the other suspects.” 

Ciel lifted his chin slightly, a thought occurring to him.  “Very well,” he replied, keeping his eyes fixed on his bowl. “Report back to me this evening.” 

Sebastian bowed courteously.  “Yes, my lord.” Ciel wished his butler would just leave him alone, but after he withdrew with the breakfast tray he returned to dress his master, so Ciel prepared himself in silence as Sebastian laid out stockings, drawers, trousers, shirt, cuffs, collar and necktie on the bed, selecting a navy blue jacket to finish off the look. Just for once, Ciel wanted to feel like more than his butler’s dress-up doll, and his discomfort communicated itself to his servant in his silence and closed expression, so that Sebastian narrowed his eyes as he tried to read his master’s face. The Earl had got better at hiding his emotions from him over the past few years, too good by a half, and Sebastian didn’t like watching him retreat to that place within himself. He had seen the boy’s very soul laid bare right from the first, he had been there to witness all the humiliation he had endured, and to now be denied access to that secret place in his master’s heart was ironic, to say the least. He let out a soft sigh as he knotted the Earl’s necktie, tugging it gently into the perfect bow, manipulating the fabric with precise and firm fingers. If one wanted something to go one’s own way, if one wanted to shape it to one’s own design, one had to be careful; a sculptor cannot use force alone. He must manipulate and tug tenderly, drawing the shape out of the stone rather than beating it into shape. To access the full potential of one’s object, one must first coax it into proximity and find out its cracks, then exploit these vulnerabilities to open it up and alter it altogether without letting it know that it is being destroyed. That, Sebastian thought, was the artist’s way.

He left his master in the morning room. Once outside the circle of the Earl’s attention, Sebastian felt himself relax and broaden out, naturally taking up more space. He was careful not to impinge on his master’s boundaries in his presence, but once out of it he could move swiftly and stealthily, hiding in plain sight, aware of his own energy and charisma and ready to put it to good use. All those that met the butler found that there was something about him that drew the eye, something warm and darting and alive that attracted the soul like a moth to a flame. Sebastian had a magnetism that he used freely, though far less so in his master’s presence; when within the circle of Ciel’s trust, he was careful never to overstep his bounds, always confining himself to propriety and the subtlest of hints and manipulations. He felt things were going better, of late, in part because the Earl seemed confused by the case - Sebastian had his own theories about Jack the Ripper, but the murderer was not the object of his search. What he really wanted remained to be seen, but it was far more personal and close to home. If the Earl would only loosen up a little further, if that delightful expression of pale confusion would only remain there a little longer, if he would only call his butler’s name, Sebastian knew he could have him once and for all. 

The day was fine and brisk, a stiff breeze shoving the scuds of white cloud along against a blue backdrop, only slightly marred by the smoke of the city, which was quickly blown downstream. Sebastian’s nostrils flared at the cacophony of odours, his senses jangling. He had attuned himself early on in life to the sensual world, rather than desensitising himself as many others did; he had always known that he would need all his wits about him to survive in this cutthroat place, and that it was not enough to be a powerful human. To do what he did and survive and, even more, get away with it, one had to be superhuman, hypersensitive to the world but indifferent to the consequences, maintaining a network of contacts and informers but never deigning to see them as friends or allies. It was a novel thing, or had been when he had first met the Earl, to serve and wear a collar - he had not been so short-sighted as to reject the opportunity, however. How could he? The promise of complete protection and immunity to the law, as well as a high salary and full license to do whatever he wanted provided he acted the good butler in working hours, was too good to pass up in comparison to the dirty, dangerous, dull life of a gang member. He had been part of the criminal organisation that had kidnapped Ciel, but not a friend of theirs, only hired by them; they had been contacts he had made in prison, after he had been arrested and charged for several offences. He thought with satisfaction of the bonfire his family had made and the flicker of red over the surrounding houses, the secret pleasures he had sought and the regrettably high price he had paid.

That was all over though, now that he had Ciel. It made him laugh to think of the Phantomhive brat as his knight in shining armour. But then again, if the Earl was not a knight then neither was he a brat; he had outgrown these labels as he had outgrown his shorts and everything Sebastian had formerly known about manipulating him. Fortunately, with maturity Ciel had also gained a new set of weaknesses, potentially more valuable to the butler. He had been perturbed at first to discover how his master was changing, but had quickly adapted - that was another reason he had managed to survive all these years; he could evolve at the drop of a hat. In contrast, his master was remarkably rigid, though of course potentially pliant in matters of importance. That is to say, if Sebastian wanted something he knew he could have it, though it might take time. There was one thing in particular that he had wanted of late, an end that had always hovered in sight but which he had never quite believed he could reach, and now that it was near, almost at hand, he was more than ready to take what was his.

_ Patience. _ He had waited three years; he could wait another fortnight more. They would solve this case, and then - who knew. He was certain this Druitt matter was helping, though, and it gave him a gateway through which to steer Ciel’s mind onto certain matters which he was not innocent of, though he pretended not to know. He looked forward to the letter his master would conjure up that evening to lure Druitt in. As a line of inquiry it might waste time, but as a diverting game it was most enjoyable. He drew the carriage to a halt in front of the stationer’s window and tossed a halfpenny to the urchin who rushed in to hold the horse’s bridle, dismounting from the box.

It was the work of a minute to purchase a cheap, poor quality notebook, pen and ink. The stationer looked somewhat surprised by the butler’s request, but he quickly gathered his wits and accepted the money, allowing Sebastian to move on ahead of schedule. The rest was easy: moving between old acquaintances, accomplices and sources, sliding in and out of bars and opium dens, weaving his way through Whitechapel undercover and taking what he could when he could until he had compiled a suspect list. After that, he took five minutes to relieve his bladder and change back into his butler’s uniform in the public lavatories, then he was off again, taking the carriage to the other London where he blended in perfectly with the droves of underlings and orderlies coming and going from the vast houses. Unlike the police, who were never welcome anywhere, Sebastian had the advantage of being on home turf wherever he was; he had grown up in the East End and knew South Bank like the back of his hand, but since that day four years ago he had belonged to the parks and promenades of the north and west, striding through North London with the confidence of a man who has nothing on his conscience and plenty in his pocket. By the tips he received from the various scullions, charwomen, footmen and page boys who either adored him or his gold, the butler could quickly gather whose employers were in town, whose were not, and whose were particularly suspicious. As it turned out, most of the nobles had not yet arrived for the season or were currently travelling - the servants were particularly talkative, since everything was up in arms for the arrival of families from the country. That narrowed things down considerably, and when Sebastian had checked up on the medical connections of every available upper-middle class or aristocratic family, his list was reduced to a single page.

The next stage was more difficult, since now he was investigating potential suspects proper, and did not want to arouse suspicion. Once again, he lured as many lady’s maids and valets as he could into cafés and bars and sat with them over a pint of bitter that he never really drank, topping theirs up as he listened to what they had to say. A few times he was forced to resort to more extreme methods, at which point he would don his more inconspicuous crook’s clothes and wheedle his way into offices through open windows and half-ajar doors, climbing into the empty stewards’ rooms when the chance presented itself and rifling through receipts and account-books for any alibi or sign of suspicion that might lead them on. Even that was not so hard - he had had years of practice at picking locks and moving stealthily and silently despite his considerable size - and before long the list was narrowed down to a few names. The sun was high in the sky and it was almost noon so he knew he should be getting back, but there was one more line of inquiry he wanted to try. It wasn’t in his master’s orders, which was why he hesitated to disobey: Ciel had told him to ‘find the killer, whoever he is,’ and unfortunately for the Earl there was a small mistake in that sentence.  _ Careless. _ But as for Sebastian - well, he had time to satisfy his own curiosity. So he drove the carriage to his last official stop, the Inner Temple, and took down Montague John Druitt’s address as he observed the dark window from a quiet alley, then he got back on the box and turned towards the Royal London Hospital.

There was a set of white coats hanging up by the back door when he slipped inside, so he slid one over his butler’s uniform and tied back his hair, donning a pair of fake spectacles. The art of disguise was not so much about fundamentally changing one’s appearance as subverting expectations; if an acquaintance of his master’s was looking for him, they would seek out the suave, imposing butler with the elaborate, arcane uniform and magnetic gaze. This specimen of a man in a doctor’s plain garb, his brown eyes shielded by thick glasses, his slightly shaggy hair scraped severely back, did not resemble the butler at all. Neither did the insolent rascal in shirtsleeves and cap who walked the streets of Whitechapel and whisked maids and men alike into the shadow of an unscrupulous inn - that was the beauty of subterfuge. Sebastian had no identity, only a broad range of masks that he was endlessly shuffling, staving off boredom and discovery through his metamorphoses. Even _he_ was not sure of who he was; all he knew was what he had done and what he wanted to do, and the portrait that that painted of him was far from pleasant. There was a single anomaly in his life, however, one on which he was constantly hung up, the only thing that ever caught him out, and it drove him up the wall every now and then when he let himself dwell on it.  _ Ciel Phantomhive. _ Why did he always come back to that boy?

He strode through the hallways a little faster. The building was one of the many large, imposing, brick constructions popularised and patronised by Victoria, and to his chagrin he found its anonymity hampered his search somewhat. At last he found it, though: the records room. He needed to see the medical records of a certain surgeon, the last person his master would suspect, the only person he suspected. A few seconds with the lock-pick and the doors swung wide, revealing a cavernous room filled with shelves upon shelves of paper documents. A muffled silence ballooned inside the space, dust motes drifting through the darkness. Sebastian lit a candle and stepped inside, shutting the door behind him.

Row upon row of cabinets towered over him. Many of the racks stood empty, awaiting some more injuries or deaths or operations to be made remarkable. He advanced slowly along the columns, his eyes scanning the small print that marked each section alphabetically. It could take forever to find what he needed, but thankfully the files were arranged by surgeon. After a short while he came upon “D”, and his gloved fingers flicked through the reports quickly until he drew one down from the shelf. There would be time enough to peruse it at the manor; it would not be missed yet. He slipped out of the room and placed his candle back on the shelf, snuffing out the wick and locking the door behind him. A minute later, and his white coat was hanging up next to the others while a butler dressed in black drove off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian doesn't know what's coming, but he has a better idea than Ciel...the plot thickens. I love my working class boy almost as much as I love the original, demonic Sebastian, though perhaps there are a few more inconsistencies in one than the other - I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Next week is Ciel's chance to spend a little time on his own...


	9. The Same Morning: That Butler, Absent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Sebastian is out looking for clues, Ciel takes the opportunity to do some thinking and investigating of his own. He goes searching for a killer, but not the one the Queen has ordered him to find - his criminal lives far closer to home, in his own house in fact...

Ciel spent most of the day moping. It was not his habit to do nothing, but since Sebastian was not here to set him unnecessary latin homework or discuss the case, the Earl allowed himself to slip into idleness, reclining in his wing-back chair in the library and skimming through a dog-eared detective novella that he’d already read a thousand times. Presently he found himself dozing off and got up groggily, resenting his own weakness. It was only mid-morning and he was already napping - not even the old or infirm had an excuse for nodding off so early in the day. His neck was stiff and he massaged it angrily, turning his frustration on the chair itself. Finally, he was big enough to sit in it properly, and yet somehow he missed the days when he had used to curl up in its leather bulk and disappear. It seemed the world was too small to contain him now, and while he liked the rush of power and control that age brought him he also begrudged the loss of comfort and protection that accompanied it. The face he saw in the mirror disconcerted him by how much more it resembled both his parents, and his fear of his past and the nightmares that ensued felt even more shameful now that he should have outgrown the childish, bed-wetting terror. But then again, his nightmares were of a different kind these days, a more uncomfortable, uncanny kind - rather than simple reflections of his memories, his dreams seemed to be shaped by something more, a third element displacing exhaustion and even fear.

It had begun a long time ago, but only recently had he dared to acknowledge it. Perhaps it was his fault for reading all those books in his father’s library -  _ his _ library - but curiosity had got the better of him, and besides, he couldn’t live in ignorance forever. He wasn’t stupid, he knew what this was, but that didn’t stop it from being thoroughly discomforting. Waking up in the middle of the night all covered in sweat, his blood surging through his veins, a heat at the base of his spine, and some phantom voice ringing in his ears; he could almost believe it was simple fear, but then he would have to ignore the evidence of his body. All those times he had tossed and turned in his sleep in this hellish, wonderful concoction of feelings, so tantalising, so frustrating, cocooned in unease and helplessness, a helplessness that could only be stopped one way. The first few times, he had buried his face in his pillow and cried - his hands had been tentative, half-disgusted. Now he couldn’t help but enjoy it, and instead of crying he went off to sleep safe and sound, a sleep revoltingly deep and luxurious, as if his body were thanking him. He wanted to deny himself, but eventually he had recognised that this was a better compromise than other scenarios. He was not like other boys his age, the sons of nobles who would be impregnating chamber maids and pouring their money down the brothel drain and causing scandals at boarding schools; he shuddered at that. No, he was not like them at all. He would never be so careless - he would never let loose.

There was only one problem. Ciel paced up and down his study floor, thinking. If he was in the house alone, or as good as, then he might as well use that to his advantage. He had always wanted to learn more about Sebastian, to penetrate the inner reaches of the man’s cold shell, but he had so far had neither the heart nor the opportunity to do so. Right now, however, his butler was out; that left him a fair few hours of liberty, hours when he could do whatever he wanted, go wherever he pleased. Taking a decision, Ciel turned the door handle and stepped out into the corridor, shutting the partition quietly behind him and looking right and left. No one was about - of course Sebastian wouldn’t trust the other servants with any task near their master. All the better for him, then. He took the stairs two at a time, turning a corner and then another and another, almost lost in his own mansion (which was ridiculous, but then he rarely used more than five rooms at a time, when there were hundreds to choose from). At last he found the carpets becoming thinner and then vanishing altogether, the staircases becoming narrower, the boards creaking beneath his feet as all decoration vanished from the hallway.  _ The servants’ staircase. _ He had rarely heard it, never sought it, only seen it once. But it seemed he still remembered the way here, and when he looked out cautiously onto the landing it appeared to be empty. That was as it should be, too; at this time of day they were all working, far away from their quarters. He took a deep breath and turned into the narrow corridor that contained the servants’ rooms.

Here, as in every other part of the house, they were over-catered for. The mansion was big enough to contain hundreds of servants and guests, and it was not long before Ciel became frustrated as he pushed open yet another door to another empty room, never landing upon one he recognised. Finny, Mey-Rin and Bard’s rooms were at the start of the corridor near the staircase, but Sebastian’s was nowhere to be found. Frustrated, Ciel ran back along the corridor, flinging wide every door. It was no good - did the butler even live here? Ciel’s cheeks were red with outrage and exertion, his breath coming in gasps. He exercised only rarely and generally refused to lose his dignity in any situation, which was why he was now doubled up, leaning on his knees, growling in denial. Sebastian had to be here somewhere, there had to be some trace of him, some clue to his past. Because that, after all, was what this was about; the very thing that perturbed Ciel so much about this case, the thing that had nothing and everything to do with it, the thing he would never admit. Sebastian was a mystery to him and where once upon a time he would have pretended it didn’t matter now his pride could not stand in the way of his desperation. He had to know his servant’s history, his innermost thoughts, if only as repayment for the humiliation he had undergone. It was not that his butler had done anything to him, exactly, only that...only that...Ciel thought of those awful, troubling dreams and the sonorous baritone that slithered between his sheets and slipped into his thoughts and flushed all over again, hot all over. Hot from running, just that.  _ I have to find his room. _

Suddenly Ciel glimpsed something at the end of the corridor and froze, backing up against the nearest door. It seemed someone - Mey-Rin, he realised as he listened to the swish of skirts - had come to investigate all the noise. Not daring to breathe, Ciel slipped inside the room behind him and shut the door as fast as he could, retreating silently from the barrier, his eyes wide. If he was to be discovered - if his servants knew - no, it was too much to bear! Mey-Rin’s footsteps sounded clipped, marked by the creaking floorboards, and Ciel realised just how loud the sound of his running must have been. God, how could he have been so stupid! Now the maid was coming this way and there was no time to think, so Ciel slipped under the neatly-made bed and lay down flat, squeezing his lanky body into the tight space. His limbs were long but he was still slender, so he just about managed it. He lay there in silence, waiting.

At first, it seemed like Mey-Rin would enter the room, for he heard her heels stop outside his door and the rustle of her apron and petticoats. Then, however, something stopped her; some taboo, some borderline, something that was enough to arrest even curiosity, the most powerful motive in humans. Ciel frowned, his head resting uncomfortably on the hard floorboards. That was unlike her - she was hardly the most tactful of people, and all his servants were trained to apprehend intruders. Was there something about the room, then? Or had she witnessed him entering?

At any event, those footfalls turned around and began to fade. Another door down the hallway opened and clicked shut, and Ciel realised that she must have simply come up here for a change of apron or something similar; his servants were always getting into scrapes. He hoped nothing too dramatic had happened, for without Sebastian such things took time to clear up, but now Mey-Rin’s footsteps began to descend and he knew she was on the stairs. It was only once she was out of earshot that Ciel dared to look up.

He was instantly surprised. There, a few feet away beneath the bed, was a pair of spotlessly-shined black shoes, their first-rate leather glistening. The gears in Ciel’s mind turned and clicked into place, and his eyes widened as he realised his mistake. There was only one person in his household that wore shoes like that, only one person who could polish shoes like that, for that matter, and it was Sebastian. He must have missed his butler’s room in his search because it was so empty that at first glance, it really did seem to be unoccupied. Slowly, Ciel slid out from under the bed, banging his head on the bedstead as he did so and cursing while he rubbed his scalp. The bed above him was meticulously made, the white sheets utterly immaculate, looking as if they were fresh out of the linen press. Ciel realised that he should have known the room was occupied by its very spotlessness; not a single speck of dust marred the polished floor or turned-down bedspread or tall window, all of it so clean that he himself felt dirty. Evidently, the butler tended to his own space just as carefully as he did his master’s.

Ciel began his investigation. The shoes had been the only thing under the bed, and just to make sure he prodded all the floorboards, but none of them came up: there were no secret hiding places here. On the nightstand an empty glass stood beside a lamp with a neatly trimmed wick, no books or magazines signalling how Sebastian amused himself in his free time. It was true that he did not have very much free time - he was due one day off per month according to the accounts book, but he rarely took it - but still Ciel would have expected something other than this unsettling anonymity. He tried the wardrobe handle and found Sebastian’s shirts hanging up like pale ghosts, fluttering slightly in the draught from the open door. That brought back memories of those nights after his kidnapping when he had worn Sebastian’s shirt as a nightgown and tossed and turned in bed while the butler kept watch or kipped in the corner, his dreams plagued by horrors untold. He had had similar nightmares then to the dreams he had now, except it was a hot sweat, not a cold one, in which he awoke these days, and Sebastian played quite a different role. He blushed, remembering the scent of Sebastian’s shirts that had comforted him in his sleep. On impulse, he leaned forward into the closet and tried to catch a faint trace of that same scent, but he only smelled mothballs and washing powder. Clearly, the servant kept his clothes as clean as his floor.

Moving away, Ciel surveyed the room again, perplexed. The chair in the corner did not show a sign of being sat in and since it lacked cushions or anything of much interest there was nowhere to hide personal possessions there, either. He danced a silent quadrille over the floor but found no loose floorboards, and the same effect flummoxed him when he tapped the walls. The minutes ticked by and Ciel began to lose his mind.  _ How can this be his room? _ Where were the traces of the man, the little signs of life, the sort of thing that everyone, whatever their class or personality, left behind? Not even a single, long black hair marred that pillow, so that it was almost impossible to believe that Sebastian had slept there at all. Did he really have some other, secret place where he kept all his things, some hideout? Somehow, Ciel knew it couldn’t be true. If this was all there was in Sebastian’s room then there would be even less of him anywhere else; perhaps he only existed in Ciel’s mind, a figment of his imagination. That was a step too far, and Ciel had to cling to the windowsill to keep from tumbling. It was a mystery, the man was an enigma. He thought back to his meditations the night before, on the similarity between himself and his butler, and shook his head. If they were all obsessed with death then it was for different reasons -  _ he _ liked death because it meant control, it meant mastery, whereas Sebastian, he could only presume, savoured destruction. That was the only time his butler showed emotion, or enough emotion to be noticeable; when he was burning something, killing someone, the way his eyes glowed and his hands moved in an ecstatic blur.

Ciel shuddered, swallowing the sudden coldness that had come over him. What had he let into his house? What had he let into his bed? That first night when he had asked his butler to sleep by him, to watch over him, when he was no more than a child struggling to come to terms with the worst of humanity, what had he unleashed? Sebastian had a magnetic energy, a whirlpool attraction that sucked all and sundry in like a greedy, empty, devouring black-hole. Whatever his butler was, whatever mistakes Ciel had made in the past, he wouldn’t make them any longer. It was some time since he had allowed his servant to watch him sleep and he would make sure it never happened again.  _ But even then _ , a voice in his head said,  _ even then you let him in your house and he watches over you from afar, your guard, your knight in shining armour.  _ Who watched the watchdog? The prospect was more than unsettling.

Sighing, Ciel turned back to the wardrobe. No false back, no false floor, no false ceiling: he supposed he should check the drawers. The first one held various cravats and neckties, all inconspicuous, mostly part of his butler’s uniform bar a few which Ciel had seen him wear in disguise - nothing to see here. The next drawer was full of socks, carefully darned and spotless...it was odd to think of his butler’s feet, and Ciel’s nose wrinkled. He couldn’t imagine Sebastian without shoes, it seemed somehow wrong. The third and final draw was as blank as the rest, filled with carefully folded underwear. A muscle ticked in Ciel’s jaw as he regarded the linen shorts, so anonymous, so utterly stainless. A sudden impulse seized him so he picked up the topmost pair and held them in the light, examining them, then putting them to his nose and closing his eyes as he sniffed deep. There was nothing, of course - no marks, no creases, no scent. He blinked slowly as if waking from a dream, then quickly placed the boxers back in the draw, checking hurriedly to see if it had a false bottom either. It did not; none of them did. Sebastian Michaelis was nowhere.

There was a noise outside and Ciel darted to the window to see the carriage coming up the drive. His stomach rumbled and he realised it must almost be lunch; would they have been looking for him? He had better get back before anyone missed him. His search had been fruitless, and had only brought him back to the same place it always led - himself. He shut the wardrobe with a bang and strode out of the bedroom door, closing it behind him, then fleeing the servants’ quarters as fast as he could get back to his study.


	10. In the Evening: That Butler, Transcribing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ciel and Sebastian forge a letter to Druitt to use as bait in their quest for Jack the Ripper. Unaccustomed to writing love letters, the Earl finds his way carefully around a new subject matter, his butler listening closely...

When Sebastian entered the study, he found his master lounging in his wingback chair, his limbs measuring up perfectly to the long arm rests and neat distance between the seat and the floor. He seemed to be reading, but the butler noticed several things at once that contradicted the ostensible - first, the slight flush on his master’s cheeks, a delicate carmine that had crept up both sides of his face; second, an accompanying sheen to his skin that, if Sebastian had not known him better, would have seemed like sweat; and third, the tremor on which each breath seemed to hitch, suggesting that, though the Earl wanted to appear perfectly relaxed, he had been breathing heavily only moments before. The butler smiled, hiding his face as he wheeled in the lunch trolley, tempted to make some cutting remark that would startle Ciel out of his complacency.  _ Have you been doing something forbidden, or are you just pleased to see me? _ He decided to spare his master the humiliation. No doubt he would find out soon enough what it was that had wrought this change, with or without the Earl’s cooperation. 

Ciel made a great show of putting down his book and marking the page he was at, his eyebrow twitching in annoyance. If it wasn’t for the fact that his master had read the book only a week previously, Sebastian might have believed the facade. He bowed low and Ciel uncrossed his legs, lifting his chin and leaning forward, adjusting his posture to something more noble and impersonal. He surveyed the tray of food indifferently, though his stomach rumbled. “Did you do as I asked?” he queried, and Sebastian raised his eyebrows.

“Of course, my lord.” The records he had borrowed from the hospital were stowed safely in the stables, where the Earl would never think to look. He would peruse them later, if he could find the time. 

Ciel sniffed, tempted by the scent of Earl Grey tea. “Was there some delay?” This was more pointed, and Sebastian paused over the lunch things. He set down Ciel’s cup and saucer carefully and began to pour the tea before he replied. Once upon a time, the Earl would have greeted him with a mutinous  _ “You’re late” _ , as cold as ice or as fierce as fire, but nowadays he had better control of his temper. Sebastian’s eyes surveyed his master’s face, watching, waiting, and Ciel looked back at him easily, his blue eyes still and calm and opaque as a windless lake.

“Nothing serious,” the butler replied, his tone light. “A line of inquiry simply extended my trip, that is all.” Ciel shifted his head to one side and Sebastian felt troubled by the equanimity of that lordly, leisurely gaze.

“You’ve made serious headway, then,” the Earl replied tonelessly, and it was not a question. They both knew that Sebastian was hiding something, and the butler’s eyebrow twitched ever so slightly in frustration. It was not his own secrets that he wanted to discuss, but those of the young man before him. After all, he was sure now that his master had been doing something illicit while he was away and all his senses strained to know what it was. He placed the cake stand with the sandwiches on the desk and withdrew, bowing once more.

“I completed my task as per your orders, sir,” he evaded, about to go. The Earl sipped his tea, accepting the stalemate, and suddenly Sebastian felt that there was something too calm about his demeanour. This was not the calm of triumph, either - there was calculation in that silence, a regrouping and reordering of tactics. Whatever it was that Ciel had been trying to achieve, he had failed, and now he was rethinking his approach; hence the stillness. His master had always been impatient and Sebastian had only recently begun to see this pensive stillness come into his repertoire - usually, it meant he had found something very important, something so important that even he could wait and plan and proceed with caution. What could matter to him so much? Surely not the case? Sebastian’s eyes flashed orange, forgetting his place for a second, and the Earl raised his eyes and met that burning gaze, drenching the flames in ice-cold water. He was not happy, no, nor triumphant, but he was prepared, and that was what unnerved Sebastian. When he realised how that look penetrated, so carefully designed to seem bland and innocuous, understanding dawned on him. He shut the door carefully behind him and wheeled the trolley back downstairs, a smirk tugging on the edge of his lips.

As soon as Sebastian was gone Ciel devoured his sandwiches. He had been starving and he felt he really should punish Sebastian more for his tardiness, but it was so unlike him that he couldn’t help but be intrigued. What was his butler keeping from him? A good number of things, perhaps, given his fruitless search that afternoon. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, thinking of his actions, the impersonal intimacy of Sebastian’s blank sanctum. He would have to try a different tactic next time, though he wasn’t sure what that would be. If Sebastian’s room was empty, what would there be of him elsewhere?

He thought of the errand he had sent his butler on and rang for him. They would write this letter to Druitt and Sebastian would post it this afternoon, before supper, so that, with any luck, they would be able to meet Druitt that night. That would put an end to the nasty business; Ciel had no doubt that if Druitt was not their man then Sebastian would find the true killer soon enough. He folded his hands on the desk, waiting for his servant to come up, and in another moment he did, entering and shutting the door behind him. “My lord?”

Ciel gazed at him equably, composed. “Bring the paper and ink you bought this morning,” he said coldly. “We are going to write a letter.” Sebastian’s lips curled into a smile at that, and he bowed and left with a burning, topaz glance over his shoulder. The Earl ignored those eyes but felt their weight anyway and let out a sigh when he was alone once more, drumming his fingers on the arm of the chair. It had been made specially for his father and fitted him like a glove, but somehow he felt uncomfortable in it and jostled restlessly until his butler returned. Ciel got abruptly to his feet, gesturing to the armchair. “Sit down.” Sebastian gave him a look, and did as he was bidden wordlessly. It felt odd, to be the one standing up when his servant was sitting in his seat, the master’s seat - the armchair was slightly too small to contain Sebastian, for Vincent Phantomhive had been a slight man and Sebastian’s height and broad shoulders made it a little cramped. The butler’s image began to eclipse the one Ciel had of his father thus seated and for a moment the Earl could only stare, unable to process this disturbing change. Then he frowned and composed himself, frustrated with his own fancy. “Can you forge his handwriting?”

“Of course, my lord.” Sebastian’s answer was smooth but there was something unmistakably insolent about those golden eyes as they rested on his master’s face, as if this was just another game. Well, maybe it was - that was fine, Ciel was good at games. The servant’s mouth opened again and he added, “You have not yet asked me the name of the boy in question.”

The Earl raised his eyebrows, startled. “You know it?” 

Sebastian dipped his head. “Of course,” he replied, and Ciel felt a swell of aversion within him. Did his butler have to reply with such complacency? “A Phantomhive butler who doesn’t know that much isn’t worth his salt.” 

The Earl twitched slightly, irritated by the saying. What did Sebastian know of his family? What did he know of any such things, for that matter? He was no more than a beast, a brute who wore the thin semblance of gentility over his violent and depraved interior. Sometimes the pretense got on Ciel’s nerves, as now. “His name is Eliot Smith and he comes from a Baronet’s family. He was tutored in Latin by Druitt and embarked on a relationship with him a year ago.” Ciel paced, giving no sign that he had heard. Sebastian sensed his discomfort and smiled to himself, amused by the Earl’s reticence. Could his master really be such a prude? So bashful, after all he’d been through, everything he’d seen and done?  _ Bollocks. _ The butler almost chuckled to himself. 

“How would you like me to begin, my lord?” he asked, bringing Ciel’s mind back to the present. His master jumped. 

“I’ll dictate,” he said, but it seemed less like a command and more like a note-to-self in an attempt to hold it together. He cleared his throat and for the first time his demeanour of control slipped fully as a childish flush rose along his throat. “Dearest Druitt -”

“Dearest Druitt?” Sebastian’s tone was unmistakably mocking. Sitting back in his chair all too comfortably, he said, “Have you ever written a love letter, my lord?” That blush deepened, covering the Earl’s cheekbones now. Sebastian probed a little further. “Or received one, for that matter?”

“That is of no consequence,” Ciel replied stiffly, breathing heavily. “My affairs are not your concern.”

Sebastian’s eyes flashed scarlet with amusement. “Oh, but I think they are, sir,” he added, and there was no doubting his insolence. His master’s face was rigidly averted, his gaze boring into the thick-pile carpet, and the butler allowed his grin to spread. “Druitt must not suspect a trap.”

Ciel glanced up defiantly, his blue eye flashing. “What do you know of these things?” he spat, his face a deep maroon. “Have  _ you _ ever written a love letter?” 

Sebastian’s eyebrows arched into question marks. “Are you interested, sir?” That deep baritone dripped with disdain. Ciel surveyed his servant with hatred, taking in the firm shoulders under the taut jacket, the dextrous, slender fingers, the tilt of the cheekbone and the proprietorial spread of his knees. Those feet were firmly planted in a way Ciel’s could never be, the complete and utter assuredness of Sebastian’s demeanour solid and magnetically alive in a manner that his master could never hope to imitate. For all his control issues, Ciel was a thinker and a wanderer, too profound to settle for certainties, too proud to accept his inner poet. By contrast, Sebastian was coarse and vulgar, devoid of all creativity but an animal allure, a power that was driven by the force and single-mindedness of his intellect and his complete lack of refinement. He played his role well but underneath it he would always be a beast, a fact that had fascinated and terrified Ciel for years. Why did his butler continue to play such a delicate game when he could crush them all with a single blow? What made this creature, so utterly destructive and powerful, so elegant?

The Earl cleared his throat. “Dearest Montague,” he began, in a deep, clear voice, “my love, my life, my soul, fair Montague.” Sebastian knew those phrases and heard the sarcasm in his master’s voice, but surprisingly enough, the naive charm of a schoolboy quoting Shakespeare worked. He wrote the words down carefully, intrigued by the subtlety of his master’s instincts. Ciel glanced back at his butler and Sebastian realised that he did not know how to go on, so he helped him out.

“A reconciliation,” he said, and the Earl’s eyes widened with a kind of dreamy seriousness that delighted Sebastian. His master had been lost in thought; could his mind have been running along romantic lines? He prompted a little further. “You need to meet up urgently.”

Ciel nodded. He paced lightly up and down, traversing the floor in a Viennese waltz step. Sebastian loved that, too - the way his master moved with such grace and elegance when he wasn’t thinking about it. Otherwise Ciel was the clumsiest adolescent in the world, a complete buffoon, and it had disappointed Sebastian that his dancing lessons had not been more successful until he had noticed his master dancing in the hallways, his sapphire eyes vacant, his mind somewhere else entirely. It seemed that, when the Earl was not thinking about being watched, he gained a feathered lightness that lifted him off the ground, the kind of levity Sebastian had always wanted to achieve, a sylph-like quality that he himself could not possess, no matter how he tried, but which eternally fascinated him. Nymphs and fauns and over-the-hills-and-far-away; they seemed, sometimes, to drift on a breeze of their own, a wind from another, magical land that lifted them above the dirt and noise and muck of the rest, the grime of mundane humanity. Perhaps it was that potential that had drawn Sebastian to his master all those years ago - perhaps it was that that kept him here, in bondage. The truth was, it had never been the darkness in the Earl that had attracted him, for his potential for corruption was no more to Sebastian than a means of achieving whatever ends he desired, a way of bringing his little lord closer to him. No, it was the light in Ciel that drew Sebastian like a moth to a flame, that ridiculous touch of starlight that turned the boy’s hair as grey as meteoric rock and his eyes to distant pools like the swirling gases of untouchable Sirius, so cold and lovely and pure; everything Sebastian would never be.

Those pink lips parted as the Earl said, “I promised myself I would not write and I promised you too, Montague.” Sebastian’s ears pricked up and he transcribed the words, his eyes trained on his master. Ciel seemed not to notice him, but then there was a self-consciousness, too, about the way the Earl retreated to that unreachable place within himself. “My love, I feel like Juliet in her bower; I cannot while away the time until I see you again. You were banished and I shed many bitter tears, too frightened to speak out for you, and now I blame myself for your absence and can bear it no longer. Know this much, love - these past few weeks have felt like years to me, an eternity in purgatory.” The butler raised an eyebrow and Ciel turned to him with a mysterious smile on his face, now dictating directly to his servant. “I can live without you no longer. I love you, Montague, and if I have not said it before then I will say it now, on barren paper, for I cannot say it to your face. I love you and I need to see you; I cannot continue as things stand.” 

The Earl thought of the elegance and care of his servant and realised what it was that was so magnetic about him. He had that power, yes, he radiated energy, but it was a potential energy, stored up, locked away. The curiosity to see what its release would look like was what drew people to him, what set him apart from the rest - for most brutes let loose daily and were not shy of shows of strength. Sebastian, on the other hand, held himself in check; he reserved his displays only for the luckiest and the most unfortunate, maintaining an air of secrecy about him. It was why his room was so utterly blank and bare, why his personal possessions had nothing of him in them - he was modest, bizarrely so for a man who was simultaneously thoroughly complacent.  _ Modest and arrogant, _ Ciel mused.  _ Humble and cocksure. _ He shivered at the thought of that word, frowning slightly. It was the only way to describe Sebastian, though he hated profanities. Once again, the man refused to be elegaic; he could not be described poetically, only a vulgar word such as that suiting his peculiarities. He turned away, revolving in a slow circle, then looked back at his butler. Sebastian glanced up, waiting for more. Ciel raised an eyebrow.

“Where would a pair of buggers meet?” he asked, and that slow smile curled into the corners of the butler’s mouth at the sound of the profanity on his master’s lips. He wondered what it would take to get the Earl to say more - perhaps, in the right circumstances, he could be very foul-mouthed. He had used to swear more at his servant but had dropped that habit as he moved into adulthood, always tailoring his aesthetic the older he grew. Sebastian leaned back in his chair, in no hurry to answer his master.

“Is that something I know?” he asked, stretching out his legs. Ciel glared at him.

“You tell me,” he replied coldly, the words clipped and precise. There was a slow, red gleam that swam in Sebastian’s gaze and made the Earl feel more and more uncomfortable, so he took off again, wandering around the room. This time, his movements were affected and self-conscious, and Sebastian’s eyes followed him mockingly without once breaking off. He stretched, cracking his knuckles in an uncharacteristically casual manner.

“Are you, perchance, asking me about my personal life?” Sebastian wondered, and Ciel halted in his perambulations. His lip curled in disgust.

“I wouldn’t bother,” he muttered in reply, and Sebastian’s eyebrows arched. “I know not to expect an answer.”

“That is wise,” the butler conceded in a somewhat patronising tone, and bent over the paper. “After all, I watched you all through the defilement and rape of your fellows when you were chained up in that underground cage. I saw what they did to you - I witnessed your every wince and twitch. I should not think we have any secrets from each other.” Ciel froze, spluttering, his knuckles white as he gripped the windowsill. His eyes were wide and his chest shuddered as he glared in outrage at his servant, his eyes blazing fire and brimstone in blue and raining wrath down upon that dark, bent head. Sebastian’s smile remained, devious and unperturbable. In the same bland tone, he added, “The Admiral Duncan in Soho.”

Ciel could only gasp for air, the floor liquid beneath him. “What?” His mind seemed to have shut off, leaving him with nothing, not a leg to stand on. He swung round in rage, baring his teeth at his servant, but Sebastian only blinked back at him calmly and coldly. It was then that Ciel realised what he had said, what he had given him.  _ An address _ , he thought, his mind suddenly settling and focusing in.  _ A confession. _ Perhaps Sebastian only knew the place out of professional interest, but...Ciel’s mind whirled and he paced up and down, frowning, coming up to the desk and slamming his hands down as he leaned over it and glared at his servant, his heart in turmoil. Sebastian raised his eyes to his master’s face, his stare insolent but no longer lazy, now seemingly voracious, sucking Ciel in, ravishing him for information. The Earl felt a dizziness come over him again and pressed a hand against his one exposed eye, swaying slightly, leaning further forward over the desk so that he loomed above Sebastian. He tried to rub away the sting from his gaze, to massage the ache from his head, but then cool, gloved fingers closed around his slender wrist, a firm grip that prised his palm away from his face. Sebastian felt the erratic beating of his master’s pulse against his fingertips and gazed up at the sleepy confusion in that blue eye, the uncertainty beautiful to watch. Ciel hovered over the desk, tipping even further forward, Sebastian’s thumb pressing into the base of his hand, that white wrist still caught in his grip. The Earl could feel the warmth of his butler’s fingers even through his gloves, a burning heat that surprised him, that scorched him down to his very toes, hot enough that a similar heat began to stir at the base of his spine. Sebastian raised Ciel’s hand to his face and for a second it looked as if he might kiss his palm - then he moved his arm to one side and Ciel stumbled forward, falling. The butler caught him with a hand under his shoulder, his grip firm, and slowly his master began to recover, watching him all the time. At last Ciel straightened up and brushed down his clothes, turning stiffly away. Sebastian did not miss that last, uncertain glance, however, and savoured it as he picked up the pen again.

“Meet me the night you get this at the Admiral Duncan in Soho. I’ll be there after dark - don’t worry about the curfew, I can escape. Oh, fair Montague, be some other name! How my heart yearns for you. I want to touch you, to run my hands over your skin.” Sebastian’s eyes widened and he listened in amazement to the erotic fluency of his master’s voice. “Tonight, I promise we will be together once more.”

Ciel turned back to his servant and cast a wary and appraising glance at him, his eyes roving over his form from head to toe. Sebastian didn’t like the self-assurance of that look one bit. “In love and impatience, your -” Sebastian blinked, realising the Earl was waiting for something. “Well, Sebastian?” the young master asked coldly. “We haven’t got all day.” The butler frowned and dipped his head, staring at the paper in confusion. Ciel took a step closer, regarding him from a safe distance. “Actually, forget his name - sign it ‘Your Juliet’.”

The servant did as he was bid, dazed. How was it that Ciel had gained the upper hand once more? What had happened in that strange and charged moment? He blotted the page, waited for the ink to dry, and folded up the paper, sealing it into an envelope, then placing the letter on the desk between them. Ciel’s eyes dropped to the little package, a cruel, beautiful smile tugging on the edges of his lips. “Post this to Druitt’s chambers by hand,” he ordered, “and we will wait for him tonight. I want dinner ready at six so we can get out before it grows dark.” Sebastian stood up and pushed back his master’s chair, bowing with a hand pressed to his heart. The Earl resumed his seat, his long legs crossed, his nymph-like power arresting as he gazed up with that rare, alarming smile into his butler’s face. He could still feel Sebastian’s warm imprint where he sat and wriggled slightly, covertly, feeling the contours of his servant’s body. The butler did not miss this, his eyes glowing like oxygenated embers.

“Yes, my lord,” he said, and left his master alone with his thoughts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had so much fun writing this chapter ;)  
> I have also made a playlist for this fanfiction, which you will find here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6h4lJRsL7ukNMegOTqloKI?si=0K7iO2ZoTfOM6DrW0mtrSQ  
> I hope you enjoy <3


	11. After Tea: That Butler, Deceived

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ciel does some thinking in the wake of his plot against Druitt, wondering about his servant and how best to entrap him, as well as tracing the memories of his past. Detective Inspector Abberline visits the townhouse and the Earl makes an unlikely ally.

Ciel sat in silence for a while after his butler left him, his thoughts a whirl. They would meet Druitt tonight - he had written the letter - his butler was a - his butler had admitted to - his butler was gone. Ciel had been sure that Sebastian was hiding something, something more, something different to what he had confessed. After all, why else would he tell his master about his sordid affairs but to throw him off the scent? Why else would he willingly render up such compromising information, such a powerful tool in this game that they played? There was no reason for him to want Ciel to know about his “personal life”, as he had called it; so perhaps, by steering the conversation onto sexual matters, he was distracting from something else. The Earl could still feel the colour in his cheeks - it had been a very successful distraction, that much was true.

But now he was alone, for half an hour at least. When Sebastian returned he would set about making his master’s dinner, and though he might bring up afternoon tea, there was a good chance he’d be too busy for that. He might send Mey-Rin in his place; but then Ciel thought that he wouldn’t wish to sacrifice the new tea set, and shook his head. The problem with having such a competent butler and living an abnormally secretive life was that one did not have the multitude of servants that most nobles had. Normally, the solitude was soothing to Ciel, but there were times when the echoes of the past became too strong or when he wished, simply for convenience’s sake, that he did not rely on Sebastian so much. Most of their guests did not know that it was only the butler in the house, along with his three underlings, but then they didn’t entertain often - when visitors came, they were either allies from the underworld such as Lau, or else mob-bosses wishing to betray or attack the Earl. Sebastian despatched those quickly enough, too; only Madam Red visited regularly, only she would suspect or care about her nephew's lonely life. She was a nuisance, but a part of Ciel was secretly glad to have someone who cared about him enough to keep an eye out without ulterior motives, mercenary dreams or vested interests. Madam Red was the closest thing he had to a friend. She understood him more than Lizzie did and she was more able to protect herself, which made them equals.  He had always wondered about her and her relationship to his parents. After all, Aunt Ann had been a regular figure in his childhood, for one reason or another - the details were vague, but he knew she’d been married and that there’d been some kind of accident, some kind of bereavement, around the time of his birth. So she had always been around, whenever his mother had grown tired and his father had needed to work, whenever he grew to be too much of a handful. His mother had been a woman of delicate health and low energy, languid and beautiful, and his father, while more affectionate than some, had often been away on business for months at a time. A part of Ciel had always suspected that it was more than just the villainous nobles that kept Vincent away from the house, though of course he would never know - his father had been exceptionally close with Diedrich, his old school friend, but since Ciel didn’t know much about his father’s youth he couldn’t prove anything. Perhaps that was for the best; perhaps he didn’t want to know about his father’s private life, much as he shouldn’t want to know about Sebastian’s. Once again, the image of the butler and the image of the previous Earl merged odiously in Ciel’s mind and he shook his head, frustrated. He was not as blind as Sebastian seemed to think, but there were some things that he would rather not contemplate. While he claimed to be all-seeing and all-knowing regarding the ills of the human soul, when he was not on duty he did not wish to wallow in that knowledge; it was his curse, not his choice. This ring, this name, this ancestry - they all condemned him to the life he led, and nothing would change that.

He contemplated the blue stone now, examining its fiery sapphire depths. It clashed with the blue of his eyes and seemed arcane and gloomy, the silverwork old and ever-so-slightly tarnished, the stained diamond at the centre containing a wealth, an ocean of sorrow, a whole history of pain and destruction that seemed to suck him in. Its spangled depths were deceiving, elongating and protracting the shape of the gem till it seemed cavernous, soaring, a landscape of cold, cobalt peaks and valleys that stretched into eternity. If Dante did not lie, and the lowest level of hell really was the coldest, then this was what it would look like, Ciel thought - achingly lovely, cruel and crystalline and crushing in its iciness. If only he could thaw out that eternity and take back his fate, his family, everything that had been forced from him when his home had been burned to the ground four years ago. And then he would be free of Sebastian and all this heaviness, free of the past and the shadow of his waking nightmares. There was a seed of goodness somewhere within him, encased within that ultramarine abyss, and if he could delve down deep enough, he might be able to save it.

That was impossible, though.  _ What’s done is done. _ Besides, did he really want to surrender everything he had now? He thought of how he had been before - sheltered, ignorant, spoiled - and what he had become. The brutal murder of both his parents had been the making of him, bizarre though it might seem, as had his abduction and abuse. He had shuddered at the outrageous vision Sebastian had set before him that day, the scene of his own destruction, the subterranean room where the auction had taken place. He still recalled the tang of sweat and blood and the stink of fear all around him, the repulsive little faces of the urchins that he had been caged up with, their screams as they came under the knife. Organ harvesting, sexual exploitation, slavery...he didn’t know which of those would have been his fate, had his turn come. He had been molested, it was true, but he had not been sold. He had come close - the man had wrenched open the cage door and leaned over him, the stench of his breath, the flecks of spit on the corners of his mouth and the blood drenching his hands carved into Ciel's memory, and he had reached in to him, wanting to touch him, wanting to break him. That was it; they had all wanted to touch him, but not just touch - to force, to destroy, to enjoy, to...rape. Whatever they would have done to him and _had_ done to him, it was a violation, all about violation, because that was what they did. That was what he had seen and understood on that day in the darkened cellar, when the candles dripped wax onto the masked conspirators and a hundred hungry buyers stood by as one child after another was forced and destroyed. For the first and last time, he had realised the true depth of sadism within the hearts and minds of humanity, the breadth of their desire for destruction, their love of cruelty fully exposed. He was not like Sade and Baudelaire and all these European voyeurs who so loved to theorise about and experiment with pain - he had been exposed to it first, before any rationalisation or conditioning had been thrust in front of it, and he understood it in a visceral way. Which was why he was the perfect Guarddog of the underworld, the reason that his destiny had become this job.

Sebastian had shocked him when he had raised that moment today. It should not have outraged him, however; the only affront lay in Sebastian’s misunderstanding, his lie. Ciel had ordered Sebastian never to lie to him, the first term of their contract, and Sebastian had broken that rule when he had told his master that they had no secrets from each other. For Ciel knew, they both knew, that however one might try to transgress the singularity of one’s own self, it was impossible to bridge that gap from human to human. Empathy was a farce, a blatant pretense, as was love - love was a corrupt and selfish force, a product only of ego and fantasy, the idealisation of a human to the point of inhumanity, to the point where that person could never live up to the weight of expectation placed on them by this “affection.” Ciel’s mother had loved him so much she would have coddled him to death, his father too; they had both wanted to protect him from the ills of the world that they dealt with daily, and as a consequence he had been stunted. They had wanted to save him from sickness and as a consequence, he had become weak - his father had done the same thing to his mother, too, treasuring her, putting her in a glass case, caging her, imprisoning her. This was what love did - it built up walls and glass houses and asylums to keep people in and it confined them, binding their hands and feet and mouths so they could not change or transcend or grow. And on that day, when Sebastian had saved him from the wreckage of the darkened room, Ciel had made a vow; never to love, never to let himself become so cruel or cowardly as to force his heart upon others. Because in the end, the heart was nothing more than an organ, the same as those organs that the Ripper had taken so violently taken from his victims, the same as those organs the cultists had sought to consume, possess, destroy and violate. To place such store by such a functional thing was folly.

He got to his feet, folding his hands behind his back. He would keep a clear head and make sure this game between him and his butler did not get out of hand. He would be calm and collected, acting with tactical precision, calculating every eventuality, refusing to let emotion cloud his judgement. For emotion was the root of all evil, and he was sworn to defend against such things. He had found nothing in Sebastian’s room earlier, and that was fine; evidently, his servant kept himself locked away in that impenetrable mind of his. To venture into his butler’s mind would be folly, for Ciel knew that it was easy enough to manipulate someone playing that game, so he would do the only other tangible, reasonable thing possible. He nodded to himself, a slight smile on his lips.

Abruptly he became aware of the sound of hooves on the carriage drive.  _ So soon? _ he wondered, surprised that Sebastian was back early. He looked at the clock; no more than five minutes had passed, far from adequate time, even for the butler, to reach Druitt’s chambers on the other side of London and return. Who, then, could it be? He raced down the stairs, too taken aback to be embarrassed by the fact that he would be unable to entertain. There came a knock on the front door and he approached slowly, his hand going to the pistol in his back pocket.

“Earl Phantomhive!” The visitor standing on the front steps seemed just as surprised to see him as he was to see them. There, mounting the stairs two at a time, were Inspector Abberline and Lord Randall, both of them hurrying, greatly out of breath. Ciel glanced from one to another, perplexed, and there was a moment of silence as all three of them paused. Then Lord Randall stepped forward and, taking off his hat, said urgently, “May we come inside?”

Ciel had no choice. He stepped aside and ushered them in, his eyes piercing the uncomfortable Abberline for some sign of emotion. For once, the young Inspector did not seem completely awkward - indeed, though he was restless under Ciel’s gaze there was a quality of focus about him that had the Earl standing up a little straighter, realising that something serious was wrong. He pointed towards the drawing room, saying, “Would you care to sit down?” But the older man only shook his head vigorously, running a hand through his damp hair.

“No time to stop,” he said peremptorily, and though he had seemed so abrupt now he was drumming his fingers on the rim of his top hat nervously. Ciel’s eyes narrowed and he fought to keep his lordly bearing, his ferocity beginning to show through.

“What is it? Why are you here?” he demanded, all attention. Randall appraised him, his moustache bristling, then huffed. He motioned to Abberline, who nodded.

“There has been another murder,” he said, and Ciel’s heart stopped, his eyes going wide. His gaze darted from one inspector to another, caught between fury and shock. Abberline took the opportunity to hold out another paper file.

“This is all we’ve got so far,” he said ruefully, his expression sombre. For once, he seemed to possess the little gravity and integrity that he could never muster in society. “It happened last night, we were called to the scene this morning. The body has been identified as one Elizabeth Stride, another prostitute.” He glanced at his superior and swallowed, his face pale. “She was - less cut-up than the last.” His speech halted and petered out, his eyes resting on the floor, and Ciel could almost see the bloody reflection in the honest brown gaze. Randall seemed to notice his subordinate’s horror and, for once, showed some tact.

“Yes, well, we’re obliged to take you to the station at once,” he said to Ciel gruffly. The boy’s eyebrows contracted in outrage but the Chief Commissioner forestalled his shock. “Not for questioning, but to see the body.” The Earl quieted, loosening up a little. “We have been told to aid you in any way we can.”

Ciel could see how much the old man hated having to defer to another noble. The pride of Scotland Yard at his feet; he could have laughed at how pathetic they were, except his mind was like a hound chasing a scent, unable to focus on anything but this new bit of information.  _ Elizabeth Stride _ , he thought, running the name through his mind over and over again. It was not familiar, and yet...there had to be a link between these women. If the murderer was simply massacring without reason, they would not wait so long to commit another killing. If it was Druitt, Ciel could have believed that he had waited because they were onto him, but the Earl wasn’t half so sure about his prime suspect anymore. Tonight would reveal all, or so he hoped. He cursed, wondering if their ruse would hold up if Jack the Ripper suspected a trap.  _ So be it. We will catch him. _

Abberline laid a hand on his arm and Ciel looked up in surprise, frowning. The Inspector smiled slightly at him, putting on a brave face. “Don’t worry,” he said, “it’s not so bad. She’s been cleaned up now.” To his surprise, Ciel realised that Abberline was looking at him with...pity. He thought of shrugging off the young Inspector’s hand, then changed his mind. Abberline could be a good ally in a tight corner - an eye in Scotland Yard - a friend, even, if he was in trouble. Not that Ciel was about to open the secrets of his heart to him, but...he could use him, in the way he used Sebastian. His loyal chess-pieces. He inclined his head towards the young man, smiling slightly.

“Thank you, Abberline,” he said, and the Inspector’s eyes widened, his smile broadening in pleasure. “My butler is out in the carriage at the moment, but when he returns I will accompany you to the station.” He turned away, his mind wandering, but Abberline’s expression hardened and he put a hand on Ciel’s shoulder.

“Hey!” he said, and the Earl spun around in shock. Though the Inspector evidently understood that he’d transgressed some social boundary, he didn’t stop, only looked Ciel seriously in the eye. “You shouldn’t rely on your butler so much,” he went on, and Ciel’s eyes widened imperceptibly. “You don’t know much about him, but - don’t place your trust in people like that.”

Glancing at Randall, who was out of earshot, Ciel stepped closer. “What do you mean?” he asked, testing the waters. He knew more than Abberline thought, but he wasn’t about to pass on this promising opportunity. “Do you have information on him?”

The Inspector sighed, troubled, and scratched the back of his head. “Not exactly,” he said, looking uncomfortable. His expression hardened when he leaned in again. “However, I do know that there is a file on him somewhere in our archives and before he belonged to you, he did some serious prison time.”

Ciel’s answer was swift. “Would this file be under his current name?” he asked, and Abberline blinked in surprise, then shook his head vigorously. He glanced towards the door, where his superior was tapping his foot impatiently.

“They do it by year,” he said. “Sebastian’s file will be in the year that he was convicted. I imagine it was some time before he met you, but I couldn’t exactly say when.” He thought for a moment, scratching his head, Ciel hanging onto his every word. Then he opened his mouth and the Earl thought he might speak, but the sound of hooves on gravel interrupted their conversation and then the carriage was there and Sebastian stepped down from the box, bowing to all present. Ciel bit his tongue, furious. Those topaz eyes looked up and met his, familiar, mesmerising, and the butler almost seemed to  _ know. _

“My, my,” he said, in that infuriating, lilting, oddly accent-less voice of his. “My apologies, my lord. It seems you have visitors.”

Ciel could only swallow stiffly. But then as he passed Abberline, he felt that something was thrust quickly into the palm of his hand and his fingers closed around it, clenching tight around the little bit of paper. There was no time to put it in his pocket - Sebastian would see. All he could do was hold onto it and hope that the heat from his hands would not blur the ink. He lifted his chin and glared down at his butler. “There’s been another murder. Take me to the Yard immediately.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've nearly finished writing this fic (I'm many chapters ahead of my publishing schedule) and whew! You're all in for a treat ;) I hope you liked this chapter, please leave comments and kudos and all that good shit if u did <3
> 
> By the way, how many of you have read the manga? I'd be interested to see who is here from the anime alone, and which of you are up to date with the crazy spoilers :)


	12. In Haste: That Butler, Discovered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ciel and Sebastian go to Scotland Yard to investigate the particulars of the most recent Jack the Ripper murder. Ciel sends Sebastian away in the hopes of finding something out about his own private criminal, but the efficient butler is never absent for long...

Sebastian lashed the horses hard on their way back into town, his mind racing. He had arrived at Druitt’s apartment and parked some streets away, making sure to remain unobserved; the position of the curtains at the window had changed, so he knew for certain that Druitt was living there. He had knocked on the door and asked if the lawyer was in, and, as luck would have it, he had been out. All it took was five minutes to drop off the letter and escape, safe in the knowledge that soon they would have proof of guilt or innocence, one way or another.

It was unfortunate, then, that they had to go out again so soon. After all, he would be very pressed for time in making his master’s early supper, and besides that he would have no time to find out what Ciel had been doing that morning. He had not forgotten the boy’s flushed face and suspicious look and he itched to go looking for the truth, but there wouldn’t be a moment to spare for that kind of thing. Then, too, the Earl had looked somewhat peeved just now, when he had arrived back with the carriage, as if he had interrupted something - but he had most likely been flustered by Lord Randall’s sudden appearance in the absence of his butler. Sebastian smiled complacently as he thought of his master's dependence on him.

Then there was the file he had stolen from the Royal London Hospital. It would be safe in the stables, for now, as long as Finny stayed away from there, but he would have no time to look at it until the small hours of the morning, no doubt. He would need to sleep at some point and usually he got up at four o’clock in the morning, leaving him little time between returning from meeting with Druitt (they would arrive back at 1 o’clock at the latest, he predicted) to sleep, let alone pursue his own investigations. All this secrecy was proving far more time-consuming than expected; he was spinning many plates, and he only hoped hard work paid off. With any luck - and he would need that luck - soon Jack the Ripper would be within his master’s power, and his master within  _ his _ power. His grin turned savage and he lashed the horses harder.

At last the carriage drew up outside the grim front of the Yard and passed under the arch into the inner courtyard, the blinds as tightly drawn as ever on the sash windows of each floor. Sebastian climbed down from the box and opened the door for his master and Ciel stepped out, cane in hand, his eyes roving thoughtfully over the red brick building. Sebastian didn’t like that look - his master seemed far too pensive for comfort, as if he was planning something. Lord Randall and Inspector Abberline dismounted a moment later, striding towards the door, and the Earl turned to his butler. “Sebastian,” he said, invoking the name he had given his servant as a command, “since we are pressed for time, go to the crime scene and write up a full report of your findings.” The butler hesitated, showing no sign of outward concern but inwardly suspicious. His master rarely sent him to do something so important on his own, however it was true that they did not have their usual luxury of hours, so he bowed and pressed a hand to his heart, climbing back into the carriage. Abberline hastily handed the butler the address on a piece of paper and Ciel turned to his servant one last time, smiling ever so slightly, his sapphire eyes gleaming. “Be back here in half an hour,” he said, and Sebastian nodded and drove out of the small court.

That gave the Earl thirty minutes to inspect the body, find Sebastian’s file and acquire as much information as he could about both cases. He sighed, frustrated and excited. Working on two mysteries at once was a real pain, especially since he couldn’t rely on Sebastian’s help for both. He nodded to the Police Chief and his underling and they ascended the stairs briskly, bypassing the uniformed bobbies and plain-clothes detectives who tipped their hats respectfully, unable to quite prevent themselves from staring at this slender, beautiful nobleman, so young yet with such authority of manner. Ciel somewhat enjoyed their glances, although their goggling eyes were repulsive - his influence was not lost on him and was especially welcome after the years of frustration he’d had to endure when his stature and age had been a barrier to him in his work. He had been treated as a child, but now he was not only treated as an adult, but treated as a noble, one of the highest in the land, almost as powerful as a member of the Royal Family and certainly better informed. 

His heels clicked as he climbed the polished staircase and crossed the parquet floor to the mortuary, drawing himself up while they waited outside the cold room. Lord Randall knocked on the door and Abberline waited stoically, his expression closing. Ciel regarded the latter warily, observing how the Inspector showed a surprising amount of courage. Did that mean this case was worse than the last? He was never surprised by the capacity of humans to inflict grievous harm on each other but still wondered at the strength of their emotions. Really, it was love that did this - for out of love was born spite and hate and jealousy, all the things one needed to become a murderer. Oh, and the desire to control. But then Ciel was no stranger to  _ that _ ; it dogged his every waking hour, even creeping into his dreams.

The doors opened and a man in a white apron wiped his gloved hands on his bib, wincing as he bowed deferently to his visitors. As expected, his eyes travelled slowly upwards, though he remained bent forwards, when he saw the Earl, and Ciel tried to ignore the inquisitive invasiveness of that stare, the scientist’s dissection of him. He reminded himself that it did not matter what other people thought, but still he could feel the judgement. Those at the Yard were none too friendly with society, and aristocrats as well-dressed as he was did tend to draw somewhat hostile glances. Still, the Earl did not let it distract him -  _ I don’t have long _ , he remembered, and silently cursed, becoming restless. Knowing Sebastian, he would be back before the half-hour was up, giving Ciel even less time to somehow make it to the archives, find the right year and find Sebastian’s file. He still didn’t really know what he would do once he got his hands on it, but he was sure it would come in useful; all his other efforts had failed thus far to discover his butler's soul, so this was his only hope.  _ Bad things come in threes _ , he thought, and ticked off the meeting with Druitt, the search for Sebastian’s file and the murder of Elizabeth Stride, who now lay on the table before him, covered by a clean, white sheet.

The coroner brushed off his hands again and said nervously, “She’s been cleaned up. Died from gashes to the throat. This one’s a bit unusual, though; you see, she was identified by something of a celebrity, a Dr Barnardo. He’s a reformer, a do-gooder if you like, he preaches in the street - but he’s got money. Had ‘im in ‘ere this morning, he saw her and says at once it’s her.” The man had taken off his bowler hat and was now twisting it nervously between his fingers, spinning it round and round. Randall frowned thunderously at him and the coroner seemed to quake in his boots, finally rousing himself and twitching back the cloth, slowly peeling away the shroud to reveal the body of a woman, stripped and mauled, white and stiff with rigor mortis, her head almost severed from her neck. Ciel bit down hard on his tongue, maintaining his composure. Hers was not the first corpse he’d seen, nor the most damaged, but it was always newly jarring to witness the baseness of the human body, dehumanised. He stepped up to the neck and frowned, looking at the neat, thin line that went all the way across. She hadn’t quite been beheaded, but the murderer had been very thorough. Abberline came to stand beside him, his face grave.

“They say he didn’t have time to finish the job,” he said solemnly, and Ciel turned to him in surprise.

“Why’s that?" 

Abberline nodded towards her abdomen.  “She’s intact,” he murmured, gritting his teeth. “The bastard didn’t have time to cut out her womb. The witness says when he found her she was still warm, and apparently, from the way his horses were behaving, the murderer could have still been there.”

Ciel’s eyebrows contracted angrily. “Then why didn’t he apprehend him?” 

Abberline gave him a look. “It was pitch-black,” he replied, shivering.

The coroner seemed eager to cover up the corpse again, but before he did so he pointed to the thin line of ruptured flesh across her neck. Turning to Ciel, he said, “See that?” The Earl raised his eyebrows inquiringly. Evidently, the man had decided to speak to him, perhaps tell him a horror story or two. He waited impatiently for the coroner to hold forth. 

The old man nodded at him under bristling eyebrows, and said, “You’re not from the Yard, are you? Well, I’ll tell you something. I reckon, ‘oever he is, he’s not like me.” Ciel frowned. Where was this leading? The coroner nodded, enjoying stringing his listener along. “He won’t be a working man, whatever he is. He’ll be one o’ them bastards, the poshos, the  _ aristocrats _ , as they call it.” 

Ciel bristled, drawing himself up, and the man chuckled, tugging on his forelock in deference.  “I mean no disrespect, it’s only - well, look how clean that line is. Straight from one side to the other, d’you see?” The Earl cocked his head on one side. He did not quite see, and it frustrated him. The man pulled back the skin to aid his explanation, exposing the grisly interior of the severed throat. “See that? Clean. Cut clean across arteries, windpipe, you name it, ‘e did it. So whoever it was, I reckon e’s one of your lot. A doctor, a surgeon, whatever you wanna call it, but he’s not one of us. No working man has the fine fingers for a cut as clean as that, nor the tools neither, let alone the know-how. I’ve never seen one like that. That’s how we know it’s ‘im, you see? There ain’t another killer 'o does it like this in Whitechapel. It’s a miracle he ain’t been caught, inn’it.”  Ciel’s eyes flashed sapphire and the man raised his hands in a gesture of mollification. 

“I mean no harm, honest! But ‘e’d stick out like a sore thumb, sure as eggs is eggs. That’s why he chose the black o’ night. Couldn’t see a thing, and yet he cut clean across.” The old man shook his head, running a hand through his hair with a contented sigh and a pleasant shiver of disgust. Ciel regarded him for a second, forever stunned by the power of ordinary minds when they bothered to use that thing, “common sense”. Sure, the old codger was only in it for a taste of the macabre, and no doubt he’d go home to his wife and flip through penny-dreadfuls and sigh with delight, but still -  _ still _ .  _ Elizabeth Stride, _ he thought, running the name through his mind. He would read her file later, but this confirmed it; he was almost sure that Druitt had nothing to do with it. After all, he wasn’t even a medic himself, only related to some, and he had no reason to be in the area, and from looking at his photograph he seemed far too refined to pass in a slum. Satisfied, he turned away from the body and strode towards the door.

His pocket-watch weighed heavy in his waistcoat, and once he stepped outside the oppressive coolness of the mortuary he flicked it open. Fifteen minutes had passed - Sebastian would be back in ten at the latest, never one to do things by halves.  _ Fine then. _ A bead of sweat ran down Ciel’s temple, his heart hammering in his chest. He had ten minutes to find the archives, find Sebastian’s file and get out.  _ Why am I so nervous? _ It was not like he hadn’t done things like this before; but then he’d had Sebastian to watch his back, whereas now he was all on his own. Abberline strode past him and Ciel glanced up thoughtfully. Perhaps he wasn’t so alone after all. 

“Abberline!” he called out, and the man halted in his tracks, turning swiftly.

“What is it, sir?” The Inspector stumbled slightly over Ciel’s title and the Earl could tell he was unused to deferring to someone younger than himself. Ciel smiled, closing the gap between himself and the other man. Abberline was only a little taller than him, and his shoes and status gave him what height he lacked so that he looked the other in the eye meaningfully. It took a moment for the young man to catch on, but when he did he nodded quickly and glanced right and left, turning away and swallowing.  _ Good _ , Ciel thought.  _ He’s learning.  _ Quickly, the Inspector led him down a set of side-stairs, slipping past constables and commissioners as they descended into the bowels of the building, below the mortuary, to where the archives lay.

At the foot of a narrow iron staircase they were greeted by a pair of locked wooden doors. Through the grimy window Ciel could see shafts of dusty sunlight filtering through an air vent, revealing row upon row of tall shelves, tightly stacked with brown paper files. He caught his breath and checked his watch again compulsively, his hands clammy.  _ Seven minutes. _ Abberline fumbled at his belt for the keys, searching for the right one, and Ciel willed him to hurry up, regretting bringing such a bungler along with him. If he could only have access he was sure he could pick the lock - it wasn’t his strong suit, Sebastian normally did that, but... _ Damn it! _ Abberline cast about with a frown and Ciel knew instantly that something was wrong. “What is it?” he asked, but the words were hardly out of his mouth before the young Inspector placed a finger on Ciel's lips and searched fiercely for something beside the door. Ciel balked, affronted by the man’s familiarity, reddening slightly in indignation. Did everyone think they could have their way with him? He thought of grasping hands in a similarly dark basement and remembered Sebastian’s fingers on his knees and lips and back, those slender hands as they pulled up his socks and hitched them in place, combing through his hair, his nausea morphing into something even more unsettling so that he felt the heat in his cheeks radiating outwards and was glad, then, that Abberline’s hand dropped, lest he feel that warmth.

Now even more savagely restless than ever, Ciel said, “Well?” The Detective Inspector held up the key and the Earl grabbed it without even asking, shoving it in the lock and rattling it a few times before he flung open the door. Unconscious hands went to his waistcoat pocket and his fingers slipped as he saw that there were no more than five minutes left, his watch plummeting and dangling by its thin chain over the dusty floor. Abberline watched him with wide eyes, noting the strangeness of his behaviour, and Ciel felt annoyed by his scrutiny. Who was he to stare at the Earl of Phantomhive? Nothing but a worthless commoner. The Earl’s habitual ire returned to him as he raced down the line, forgetting to even look at the labels on the cabinets. Behind him, Abberline sighed and began to help out, looking intently for the right year. When he spoke, the dust in the room seemed to swallow up the echoes of his voice.

“Did you read the slip of paper I gave you?” he asked, and Ciel frowned, skidding to a halt. No, he had not; he had not even been looking at the bookshelves.  _ Careless. _ At once he fished out the scrap, but it was smudged beyond recognition and he flung it down in desperation, grinding it under his heel. Abberline sensed his panic and approached Ciel, his eyes wide with alarm. “Are you alright?” he asked, reaching out, and the Earl smacked his hands away impulsively, furious. His breath rattled in his narrow chest as he glared at the Detective Inspector, who seemed shocked into stillness, petrified. That one blue eye blazed cold hell, Cocytus waiting in its depths, washing the shores of Ciel's mind with a despair that seemed to brim over. Abberline’s expression seemed to soften and then crumple, and he stepped forwards again, but Ciel edged back, refusing point-blank to be consoled. He drew in one long, measured breath, and another, and the Inspector realised he was counting under his breath, so he waited patiently, more careful now. At last Ciel seemed to return to reality, straightening his spine and lowering his hands.

“What year?” he demanded, and Abberline snapped to attention. He racked his brains.

“How old is he?” Ciel blinked blankly at him and he sighed in exasperation, tearing at his hair. “Do you know how long ago this was?” Ciel shook his head slowly, mistrustful. When he replied, his voice was thick as if from sleep.

“I think he was in there for most of his twenties,” he muttered, his gaze distant. “I believe he is in his mid-thirties now.” Abberline nodded, frowned and stroked his chin, then he snapped his fingers and gave a shout, racing over to one of the shelves.

“I remember!” The Earl followed him at a safe distance, still oddly lethargic. Abberline couldn’t tell what he was thinking but his mind was too focused on scanning the shelves to think of anything else. At last he found the year 1875 and began flicking through the degraded cardboard, frustrated by the faded, spidery handwriting on the spines. Honestly, they were Her Majesty’s police force and they couldn’t afford better ink? Twice his hands sped past it, but at last he found it and drew it out. The cover almost fell away in his hand but he flipped it back regardless, revealing a sheaf of papers and, pinned in the top right corner, a picture of a sullen-looking, slender, dark-haired young man.

Ciel stared down at the page in fascination. The grainy black-and-white mugshot was Sebastian alright, but not as he’d ever seen him. He looked more ratty, more rabid, more depraved than Ciel had ever known him, and besides that there was a murderous light in his eye that almost made the Earl laugh, perverse though it was. He knew that look; that was the look that Sebastian wore when he was beaten, a rare thing, the look of a man scorned, the blunt fury of a child that doesn’t get its way. Sometimes, Ciel would see a glint of it beneath the surface, and though it sent shivers down his spine he was not always sure that he was as properly afraid of his servant as he should be. Still, this would provide him with ample opportunity for changing that - he snatched the thing out of Abberline’s hands and flicked through it, the Inspector turning his back respectfully. “I’ll watch the door,” he said, and stepped outside the stuffy room, leaving the Earl on his own.

Ciel stared long and hard at the blank, brown cover of the booklet. It was old, but not by more than ten years and remarkably decayed. A strange desire to shove the thing away where it would never be found seized him, but he found he could not put it down. His hands seemed glued to the cardboard, his sweat seeping into the paper. He glanced at Abberline’s shadow outside the door and then went to check his pocket watch, but changed his mind. It wouldn’t do to have a cursory glance at the file and then lose it forever - no, he would take it with him. He unbuttoned the breast of his jacket and tucked the thing away quickly, glancing around guiltily and patting his cardboard chest. Perusing his reflection in the door, he saw that the file did look a bit odd, but only someone who knew he had it on him would notice. Plus, once he was outside he’d have his cloak on, and that would cover it nicely. He would think about what to do with it at home.  _ Cross that bridge when I come to it. _

He heard a quiet knock on the door and Abberline’s look of surprise reached him even through the dim glass. Instinctually, Ciel knew it was Sebastian. He sauntered to the door, a swagger in his step, and flung it wide. Sure enough, there stood the spitting image of the man he had just glimpsed in black-and-white; cleaner, older, better defined, better fed and better dressed, but undoubtedly the same.  _ This will be interesting _ , he thought, and couldn’t help the mischievous light in his eyes, though he did well to suppress his smile. Sebastian stared at him hard, scrutinising every inch of his master, stripping back the layers with those burning topaz eyes. Ciel thought he might see the file, but then the butler stepped aside and said, “My lord, your carriage awaits.” The smile came easily to the Earl’s lips and the butler dared to narrow his eyes, his red gaze burning holes in his master’s jacket. The not-so-little lord gave nothing away, however, and so he fell into step behind him, no more than a silent shadow, Abberline suddenly redundant beside them.


	13. At Home: That Butler, Omnipresent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ciel struggles to conceal his discovery on the journey home, while Sebastian suspects that his master is up to something. Even in the seclusion of the townhouse, there is no hiding from each other...

All the way home Ciel sweated into his gloves and gripped his knees, leaning forward, white-knuckled, unable to bear a single jolt in the road. His mouth was dry but he didn’t dare cough lest his butler heard, though he was well out of earshot, the inexplicable fear that Sebastian would somehow _know_ driving the incessant thud of his heartbeat. He had never done anything like this before; he had never actively worked against his servant, without his knowledge, the sense that Sebastian was somehow omniscient, previously comforting, now filling him with blind terror. It was a constant, sharp presence, hot and prickling in his chest, a perennial asthma attack but many times worse - the needling of his conscience made his mind erratic, too, so that he couldn’t focus, his very bones vibrating with energy. He tried to think about the case, about Jack the Ripper, anything to take his mind off, but it was impossible. The idea of meeting Druitt that night made him sick; he could not, _would_ not interview a suspect in this state, all he wanted was to go to bed and peruse the file by candlelight.

But the butler would know. The butler always knew - Sebastian watched him constantly, every waking moment, every sleeping moment so that that face loomed and bled into his dreams, a death-mask, a vision of hell incarnate. He would not have three seconds to himself before he heard a discreet knock on the door, and then it would be over, the game would be up, no matter what he did. And after that, the servant would search constantly, would not rest until he had unearthed his master’s secret. That was the nature of his job, after all. Ciel wished he had had time to read the papers in the archive - it would be that much more difficult to do secretly on home turf. There had almost been enough time; enough time to skim, to peruse, to flick through and restore the cardboard slip to the shelf. Even Abberline didn’t know where it was now. The power was in his hands, but that power came with a danger, very real, very tangible and very close.

Sebastian’s right hand clasped the whip tight as they bowled through the streets, knocking over pedestrians and unsuspecting pigeons. They were behind schedule, of course he was driving fast - why shouldn't he? Who'd stop them - the Queen’s police force? His fists clenched even tighter and he gritted his teeth, his expression ugly. He didn’t know how or when it had happened, but he had been outwitted, one way or another, and by the peelers of all people. The look that had passed between Abberline and his master, the archives, the Inspector guarding the door, the Earl safe within...it made his blood boil to think of such a ridiculously inappropriate alliance. Had his master really stooped so low as to consort with policemen? He supposed that Abberline wasn’t exactly an ordinary bobby, but then he wasn’t special, either - he deserved no particular attention or trust. What had wrought this change in his master? Sebastian felt he didn’t know him anymore. How had the Earl managed to slip through his fingers? The butler felt the hard leather of the whip cutting into his hand and knew it would leave a mark, but he no longer cared. Now was not the time for trifling, and his master was behaving in a very trivial manner. He was sure that it had something to do with the boy's secret activities that morning.  _ Sending his servant away on fools’ errands _ , the butler thought scornfully. No, he would not be duped again. He would bring his master to heel, like the puppy he was.

If only Ciel would allow himself to be guided by his butler. If only he would let himself be manipulated, seduced, handled - then they could both have their way, more or less - and more importantly, balance would be maintained.  _ Inside the mansion, balance rules _ , Sebastian thought,  _ outside the mansion, Britain rules. _ He sneered and lashed the horses hard. He hoped the Earl was having a bumpy ride - it would teach him a lesson. A few bruises on his smooth little backside, however they were sustained, wouldn’t be amiss. The servant allowed himself a rare lapse of decorum as he let his mind dwell on that image; that bare, white rump, slender and pert and lithe, mottled with dark blue patches where the whip had struck. If the boy had been even a little younger he could still have caned him, but that required a pretext - nowadays, it was hard to get away with that sort of thing. His master would never allow him so much autonomy, he was sure of it. Quite without his noticing it, over the past few years the Earl’s leash on Sebastian had shortened, his grip on his servant increasing to the point where the butler found their relations increasingly strained, exceptionally so. It was almost impossible to do his job now, let alone play games on the side. When had he become so lax as to allow Ciel self-mastery?  His master did not even try to restrict his freedoms, rather the opposite. Ostensibly, Sebastian had more autonomy than ever before - he could ask for days off and take time out from work and go hang around the bars of Soho or wherever, take a stroll by the strand, slip into a playhouse, pick up a girl, whatever he liked. The butler’s expression curdled. What need had he for these _allowances_? It seemed the Earl believed that this was decent compensation for Sebastian's loss of liberty within his job; Ciel only lost his temper very rarely nowadays and never allowed his servant to transgress the strict social boundaries of their relationship, though once upon a time he had been quite lax. At a time in which class emancipation kept increasing, Sebastian thought it very uncharitable of his master to be so strict. Perhaps the Earl believed it a good thing for the butler to have free time in which he could vent his anger, let off steam, relax a little; perhaps he thought to have him followed, to learn more about his servant covertly, or perhaps he simply believed that Sebastian would be a more useful and reliable source of information if he regularly circulated amongst the bars and music halls and haunts of all classes and members of society, so they weren’t blindsided by the underworld.  Whatever the reason, the butler thought it a cheap trick to try and draw his attention away, and it would not work on him. Ciel could not hide the fact that he remained dependent on his servant, obsessed, even in spite of his aversion; and the same could be said about Sebastian. He didn’t demand holidays because he did not need them - in committing himself to this contract, he had willingly signed his life away in exchange for the life of the Earl. Now the boy was in his clutches he could not escape, however hard he tried; the butler would make sure of that. A slow smile returned to his features as they passed through the suburbs and he checked his pocket watch. Only three minutes behind schedule. His brow furrowed, and he drove more slowly and carefully, relaxing his grip on the reins. Entrapping the Earl was a double-edged sword - after all, the boy was not stupid - Ciel understood that he was in a cage, and a cornered wild animal was most dangerous. They were stuck in deadlock, stalemate, neither could get their way without some change, and Sebastian was growing impatient. It would not do to breed resentment or corruption in his master by putting pressure in the wrong place. If Ciel became desperate then he would sully himself and Sebastian’s dream would be destroyed; he couldn’t have the boy dissolve before his eyes, vanishing into thin air. He had waited all these years for him, playing honourable when he was the basest of creatures, and to be denied now - it didn’t bear thinking about. He was already seeing the taint of corruption in his master’s soul in his dealings with Abberline, whatever they were, all those little attempts at secrecy. The butler would have to make sure those secrets did not remain secret for long; he could not let them or this improper relationship between the Earl and the Inspector continue. _Better to end it now._ The game was almost up. 

The corner of the servant’s mouth quirked up as he drove down the gravel drive, thinking of their plans for the night ahead. It would be a long one, he had no doubt about that, but this case had helped him greatly thus far - there was no reason why it should not continue to do so. He stepped down from the box and opened the door, moving aside to let his master past, his topaz eyes following every move the Earl made. Ciel held his head high but felt that gaze all the same, weighing on him like a chain around his neck. The cardboard in his jacket rustled and he felt sure it was louder than a gunshot. Sebastian continued to watch him, but made no indication that he had heard. He opened the front door and closed it behind him, sweeping his master’s cloak from his shoulders and taking his hat and cane too. There was a moment where their fingers touched as he reached for the stick and a jolt of electricity seemed to pass through the two sets of gloves, light and dark, Ciel’s heart catching in his throat. He shook his head slightly, surreptitiously, clearing it, and stood apart. He just wanted to be alone, but he knew he wouldn't be free for hours now; besides, he was never truly alone. His butler would have to make supper, however, and that would give him some time - half an hour at least. He could sit in the library, or maybe his bedroom, or some other room that he never used, somewhere Sebastian would never find him...the possibilities bloomed before him and his hope rekindled. He would have his way, he would find out the truth.

Sebastian stowed his master’s things in the cloakroom, then returned, saying, “I will only be a minute, sir.” Ciel gave a little jerk of his chin and the butler left, shutting the front door behind him and approaching the carriage. He climbed back onto the box and drove the horses round towards the stables with a flick of his whip, dismounting and guiding them into the coachhouse, then disentangling them from the shafts of the carriage. They snorted and shook out their manes, trotting obediently after him as he led them into their stalls. He took his time, though time was short, unbuckling their tack and brushing down their coats, stroking their ears and combing their manes and tails. Suddenly he felt unaccountably tired, exhausted by the day’s events. He was a lively man, usually full of energy, but for a second, he actually felt his age and shivered slightly, closing his eyes and leaning his head against the horse’s warm flank. Its side shuddered with breath, its ribs solid behind the taut muscles, its heart thudding under his touch. He could smell that sweet, fetid, bestial scent that surrounded them, the scent of warmth and life and dung and decay. Ciel did not like him to smell of horses, so he rarely did this in his butler’s clothes, but he was short on time and needs must. The approach of middle age seemed to weigh heavy on his broad, upright shoulders, his hair still marred by a few, well-hidden strands of grey. Men of his age were settling down, but the butler did not settle, the valet could not marry, the steward could not move on. They were cursed to serve their masters forever, to look after them into old age though no one would look after _them_ in _their_ old age. It was a good thing, then, that he cared for the Earl, in the most perverse of ways. The worst thing of all would be to stop caring; to lose interest altogether.

The weight of his watch in his waistcoat pocket brought him back to reality and he opened his eyes, appraising the animals silently, then leaving them be. He would need to harness them up in an hour’s time, but they deserved a rest - they had worked hard today. Perhaps he himself would get a holiday soon; perhaps he should take up his master’s offer. The thought of leaving the Earl was too much, though, for he did not trust the boy to do anything himself, let alone trust anyone else to help him out.  _ I am all he has, and he is all I have _ , Sebastian thought with grim satisfaction. It was not healthy, not by any stretch, but their interdependence saved them both from thinking. After all, what would be the point of each of their lives without the other? It would be impossible to live without Ciel and Ciel could not live with Sebastian. He unhooked his butler’s tailcoat from where it was hanging up by the door and pulled it back on, switching his gloves and surreptitiously sniffing himself. He did not smell too strongly of horse, and since the Earl would be avoiding him it would not matter. He sniffed again, reassured by his own sharp, tangy aroma beneath the farmyard top notes, the smell of his body, this body in which he had lived for thirty-six years. On the bright side, at least he liked his body - he trusted it, he spent time with it, he saw to its needs. Unlike his master, who despised his own physical form, mistrusted it. That worked to Sebastian’s advantage too.

Ciel was not in the hallway when the butler returned to the house. He paid it no mind; he had work to do. He would find him, he was never that far away. Sebastian listened carefully and thought he heard footsteps somewhere in the East Wing.  _ Ah. _ So the Earl was trying to evade him, was he? The desire to seek him out and squeeze the truth from him was overmastering, but Sebastian regained control. They would speak over dinner - there was no avoiding it. In the meantime, Sebastian had to make that dinner. He made his way belowstairs and hung his tailcoat up in the kitchen, changing it for an apron and tying back his hair.

Once he was alone, Ciel made for his father’s smoking room. It was a place he never went, not being in the filthy habit himself, and since he rarely entertained, especially not in the London house, he knew Sebastian would not expect to find him there. The room was shrouded in sheets and shadows and silence when he entered, but he found a box of matches on the mantlepiece and struck a light, burning his fingers three times before he managed to get the candle going. At last the wick took, so he balanced the thing precariously on the arm of an old chair and sank into its sagging leather depths, feeling the hard imprint beneath him of some ancient occupant. In the low light he found the old room most eerie, but did not let it distract him - he was here with one purpose, and one purpose alone. His legs were too long to curl up beneath him but he tried reflexively anyway, before realising with discomfort that it wasn’t possible. His confusion caused the chair to rock, and the candle tipped from the arm and went out.  _ Drat _ . Ciel fumbled around in the dark, squirming, and eventually extricated himself from the armchair, crouching down on the ground to grope for his light. His fingers came back burned and he cursed, a torrent of language that Sebastian certainly hadn’t taught him. He couldn’t see a thing but his nostrils caught the scent of smoke, fresh and acrid, from some source. With a start, he realised that the carpet was on fire.

The Earl leapt back with a cry, slamming the heel of his boot into the floor again and again in an effort to put out the smouldering embers. There was a moment when an orange tongue of flame flared up, illuminating the dust sheets momentarily, but then Ciel leapt on it and crushed it, squishing the warm wax of the candle into the floorboards, shouting. His eyes shone, wide and fearful, in the glow from the blaze, and for a second his chest tightened and he thought he might have an asthma attack. Then the flames died down and he knew it was over. Out of breath, he flopped back onto the chair with a sigh, wiping his forehead. Now he knew which direction the door was in, so he fumbled his way towards it and flung it open, squinting in the light that streamed through the tall windows in sunset colours.  _ Sunset.  _ He remembered Druitt and a cold hand seized his heart. Now he had no desire to read the file; it would be better if he stowed it somewhere for safekeeping and waited till an appropriate time came up. 

Yes, he would do that. Turning around, he glanced at the ground and was horrified by the sight of the mess he’d made. The wax had pooled and hardened into the floorboards and even he, though unacquainted with housework, knew how badly wax stained, and if that wasn’t enough he’d scorched away a whole section of what he suspected was probably quite an expensive Persian carpet. The scorch marks extended to the fine boards underneath and the clawed foot of the chair in which he’d been sitting, also daubed with wax. But the crowning glory of the disaster were the pages of Sebastian’s file, lying on the ground and soaking up wax. Ciel swore and rushed towards them, gathering them to him and crying out in frustration when he saw the black marks where part of the document had been burned away. It was too precious, too sacred, and now - he’d tarnished it, he’d sullied it, he might have destroyed his only evidence of Sebastian’s soul. For a second, his eyes and cheeks burned with frustration, but when the tightness in his chest receded he found himself sensible enough to examine the extent of damage. It was bad, but not so bad as to be unsalvageable; about a sixth of the contents were gone, but it was only the corners and edges that had been damaged, and a large proportion of the cardboard cover. Sighing in relief, Ciel flopped down on the floor and rolled onto his front, letting his face rest in the carpet. It smelled of cinders now and he wished he hadn’t ever come in here, for now Sebastian would be suspicious, and - oh, he was a fool! He would have to find a better hiding-place for the file, that was for certain. Somewhere on the other side of the building, somewhere even Sebastian couldn’t find it. He didn’t know if such a place existed.

He got up, the smell of smoke making him uncomfortable. He ought to be more careful with fire; he ought to get some of those new, electric lights installed. Much safer. He would have Sebastian deal with that some other time, but soon - a twist of unease settled itself in his belly as he remembered his dependence on his butler and why it troubled him. He glanced down at the file in his hand, but couldn’t bear to bring himself to read it.  _ Oh well. _ He would keep it anyway, for blackmail or whatever other use he could think of. Leaving the door ajar, he strode stiffly down the hallway in the direction of his quarters. He didn’t know quite where to hide it, but he knew it would be useless keeping the file somewhere he might lose it or it might become damaged - better to hide it in plain sight, even Sebastian missed things like that on occasion. Entering the library, he turned to a certain glass-fronted cabinet and retrieved the key from around his neck, turning it in the lock. This was where he kept all the files and information concerning his parents. Even Sebastian didn’t have access to this place, for the Earl slept with the key on him and the lock was pretty much unpickable, so the butler couldn’t turn to his sordid ways to get in. Of course, until now the cabinet hadn’t held anything Sebastian didn’t know about, so Ciel didn’t expect it to interest him much. He slid the brown paper file in amongst several other similarly anonymous folders, and, though the difference in condition and quality was relatively apparent, if he shoved it far enough back and then closed and locked the door Sebastian would be unlikely to notice it and unable to access it. Untangling the chain, he slid it over his head once more and stowed it beneath his collar. 

That was a weight off his mind, for the time being. Soon enough, he would have to confront the knowledge that lay within the booklet; but for now, he could forget about it. His mind a little more at rest, he left the library and proceeded to his study, where he settled down with a penny dreadful and a pocketbook full of notes on the case.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That phrase about "inside the mansion...etc." was my take on an old saying from imperial Europe - "Inside Europe, balance rules, outside Europe Britain rules" (neat)  
> A quick update: I am going on holiday for the first time in MONTHS (yay!), but that means there won't be an update next week - my humblest apologies. I'll be away for just under a fortnight so you'll get your update the week after, although it may be a few days late. I'm really enjoying writing this fic and I'm THIS CLOSE to finishing it - all I can say is, heinous smut it coming...


	14. During Dinner: That Butler, Insubordinate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With little more than an hour until Earl Phantomhive and his butler are set to meet Montague John Druitt, tensions between the two are rising. Sebastian thinks he has a tight grip on things, but a little investigating brings him closer to a deeper mystery, closer to the truth, and much closer to his master...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back home and here to serve. Enjoy the update...

Sebastian checked the clock on the wall every five seconds as he diced the carrots for the vegetable stock. He was almost done, but after that he would have to compare notes with his master while he ate, find some food and time to himself for the perusal of his own, secret findings, and do some creeping round the house to see what his master had been up to that morning. His eyebrow twitched in irritation - did he have to keep a twenty-four hour watch on the boy just to keep him out of mischief? To say the least of this pointless palaver with Druitt.  _ Evidently not the killer _ , he thought. Oh, they had to rule him out, and of course Ciel would need to hear the evidence himself to be convinced, but any fool could see what was going on. Somebody had tried to cover their tracks and had thrown Druitt under the bus as the closest unfortunate, and Ciel, in his dogged, slow, methodical way, had fallen right for it.

The edge of the knife nicked the butler’s finger through his glove and he hissed, dropping the blade and bringing his hand to his mouth. A stain was spreading over the white material and so, with an exasperated sigh, he shucked off his gloves and exposed the red wound, a tiny slit that was nonetheless painful. On impulse, he squeezed his fingertip and blood welled up, crimson drops sliding down his finger. He found their progress mesmerising, regretting for a second that blood in a kitchen was considered unsanitary, if only because it meant he had no excuse for standing here and watching himself bleed. The human body was a marvel, a constant source of delight, and the sharpness of the pain together with the sight of his own blood only made Sebastian feel a little more awake and alive, the flames in his eyes flaring up. He sucked on his finger hard, draining it voraciously and wishing it was something, anything else. It was not his own fingers he wanted to suck, it was not fingers at all. He was growing impatient, the heat of all his pent-up energy and frustration beginning to scorch him. Too long had he been kept as a pet, a setpiece, a side-player - now he wanted his freedom, his autonomy. But not freedom from his master; quite the opposite. The paltry facade of freedom that Ciel would offer him was no freedom at all, only evasion.

When he had bandaged up his finger, donned a fresh pair of gloves and swapped his apron for his tailcoat, he piled up the dishes on the trolley and left them by the door, making his way upstairs to find his master. He had heard him moving about in the East Wing so he tried there first of all, but strangely enough there was almost no sign of him - until Sebastian noticed that the door to the smoking room was slightly ajar and, upon pushing it open, discovered the smell of burning and the mess that the Earl had made. He almost snarled when he saw the scorch-marks on the carpet, then stilled completely as he noticed the congealing white mess that covered the chair and floor. For a second, his eyes widened, burning bright, halted in his tracks by the possibility - the sheer thought - of what it was that his master might have done. He bent down and swabbed the liquid, but was disappointed to find it hard.  _ Wax; just wax _ . Nothing more interesting, nothing so enticing as he had hoped. He shook his head to clear it, furious with the boy for making such a superfluous mess and furious with himself, too, for suspecting his lord of being capable of anything more than the weak indifference he had shown thus far.  _ Get your mind out of the gutter. _ He could almost hear his master’s voice as he said it - and he would have said it, if the butler dared to suggest such a thing. Or perhaps not: perhaps he would become flustered, red-cheeked, pliable, or else willing and wanton, stirred by the merest hint. Sebastian could not know how on-edge his master was, but he _had_ gleaned an inkling of his feelings, and was therefore intent on finding out what Ciel was up to. This had to end here, the sooner the better - they would get the Ripper out the way and then his chance would come, in the depths of despair, in the throes of relief, just when the Earl believed he was safe. Sebastian cracked his knuckles, striding out of the room towards the other end of the house.

The food was in danger of getting cold, so he forewent his usual sedate pace and hurried to the West Wing. There he found his master as he had many times before, seated in his study in a chair by the fire, apparently absorbed in a book. This was the second time that day that the boy had used that particular excuse, the second time he had pretended to read the first chapter of  _ A Study in Scarlet. _ He really wasn’t trying hard enough with his cover stories - was this, then, such an important matter that he became agitated to the point of neglect, or was it quite the opposite, so negligible that the Earl hardly minded if his servant found out?  _ The former, I think. _ Sebastian couldn’t be sure, but as he bowed to his master there was an intense edge to the eyes that did not look at him. Ciel calmly closed his novel and placed it on the desk before him. It was the butler who broke the silence. “My lord, your dinner is ready.” The Earl regarded him almost absentmindedly, though there was a self-consciousness that lingered on the fringes of his gaze that hinted otherwise.

“Bring it up,” he said. “Here is as good a place as any.” Sebastian nodded and bowed again, tired of the endless deference that he did not have time for. He checked his pockets as he wheeled the trolley upstairs to make sure that the notes he had taken at the crime scene were still there, running over in his head what he was going to say. He debated mentioning his sojourn at the Royal London Hospital, but decided now was not the time. The Earl would be too busy, it would throw him off balance, and as much as Sebastian wanted to unseat him he wasn’t going to endanger the safety of both himself and his master, as well as the outcome of the case, by messing about at the wrong time. He opened the door to the study and began to clear a space on the desk, setting down the first course and removing the cloche. Ciel seemed self-conscious and did not at first pick up his knife and fork, which wound the butler up even more. The last thing they needed at this point in time, when they had to meet Druitt in under an hour, was for the Earl to be picky about his food. Sebastian watched his master intently, trying to see through that restless exterior, but then Ciel spoke up and the servant’s attention was diverted.

“You have not shared your findings with me,” he said, picking at his pork chop. Sebastian sighed slightly and Ciel fixed him with a sharp look.

“Would you like me to go through them now?” the butler replied wearily, and the Earl bristled at his irony, stung. Sebastian couldn’t have cared less - he was tired of convention, tired of tradition, tired of everything he had tied himself to when he had been trying to tie himself to Ciel. The latter gave a short nod, chewing sullenly like an unfriendly goat, and so Sebastian retrieved his pocketbook and flipped through it, summarising in a bored, though perfectly polite, voice. “Crime scene was Dutfield’s Yard in Whitechapel, near to Dean Street where Elizabeth Stride, the third victim, lodged. Some blood remained, although most of it had already been washed away, the yard being in regular use. She was found at one o’clock in the morning by Louis Diemschutz, a local resident and van driver whose horse seem to shy upon entering the yard, whereupon he struck a match (which was almost immediately extinguished by the strong winds) and saw a woman lying on the ground. He went into the Men’s Club to get help and upon returning, noticed the blood. The policeman they called found that Stride’s body was warm and her throat deeply cut. No particulars of the crime scene to give a clue as to who the killer was, although several witnesses say-”

“Alright, I know.” Ciel cut him off impatiently, sipping from his glass, and the butler shut his mouth with a snap. Perceiving that he had offended his servant, it was the Earl’s turn to huff. “I read the witness statements. Her body was not as mauled as the others’ - her abdomen was intact, only her neck was damaged. The killer cut right through the jugular; it was the coroner’s opinion that the murderer was certainly the Ripper, because, as we have noted, he demonstrated significant surgical skill.” Sebastian stood stock still, waiting. In the interim, he removed his master’s plate and replaced it, refilling his glass. The boy drummed his fingers on the desk, restive. “Well?” he said at last, and the servant might have hissed, for the way his crimson eyes flashed. Ciel almost flinched, recoiling slightly. What had he done to upset his butler? A sadistic warmth flooded him as he thought of the file locked away in its glass case. His dog could threaten him no more - finally, he had the upper hand. Settling more comfortably in his chair, he tucked into his pudding, adding, “Your conclusions?”

Sebastian exhaled slowly. He checked his watch pointedly, thinking of the file in the shed, everything he knew, all that would soon be confirmed, and how pointless an exercise this was. But he had resolved not tell his master yet; he had to play along for the time being, if only to avoid suspicion. Pocketing his notebook, he said, “The killer performed the murder in the black of night, a windy night too, with a steady hand and medical accuracy. Furthermore, the victim did not cry out or seem to suspect an assault prior to the murder, suggesting that, once again, the victim knew and trusted the murderer. The body was warm and the womb intact, so it is possible that the killer was frightened away by the witness and did not have time to finish the job. So far, all of the victims have known the killer and been somehow acquainted with them, so we need to look for a connection there, other than prostitution. There is no apparent link between the three women or sign that they knew each other; they are linked solely by the murders. This murder tells us little that we didn’t already know.” Ciel’s eyes narrowed at such insubordination, and he put his spoon down in his empty bowl and got to his feet, frowning at his butler. There was something suspicious about his servant’s aspect - the sparse summary, his impatience...what was Sebastian not telling him? The Earl was bold enough to voice his distrust.

“There’s more?” he said sharply, and his servant glanced down at him, sensing that they were entering dangerous territory. He held his master’s searching gaze until that penetrating look seemed to retreat, then he took out his watch and tapped it.

“We really are running short on time,” he replied evasively, his tone commanding and cold. “If we are to catch Druitt, we must leave soon.”

Ciel sniffed disdainfully, still wary. “I give the orders around here,” he had the gall to say, and Sebastian’s lip almost curled, but he turned away to hide his expression and cleared away the dinner things instead. He was thankful, for once, that he had these menial tasks to complete, if only to hide his scorn; his master was way off the mark, and though he knew it was not quite fair to judge when he was withholding information, still it was obtuse of the boy to miss the blindingly obvious. “Have the carriage ready in a quarter of an hour,” the Earl commanded, and Sebastian bowed over the pile of dirty plates and left. The crockery was balanced precariously on its tray, so he had to go slowly, but every bit of him strained to run and as soon as he had deposited the plates in the kitchen sink he flung himself out of the back door and ran through the rain to the stables, never minding that his hair and clothes would be soaked. He had to do this now, he could not bear to wait any longer, there was no way around it. Flinging himself down on a bale of hay, he rifled around and, after a heart-stopping second when he thought the papers had disappeared, he found the file he had stolen from the Royal London Hospital. He leaned back against the wall, not quite relaxed, his heart beating fast. There was little time, and his wet gloves dampened the paper, making it soggy.  _ Bugger. _ He would have to return the file, he knew - or perhaps not, depending on the speed with which his master caught up. Perhaps he could even give it in as evidence; and now, as he flicked through and saw the list of names and photographs, it formed a pretty poem in his head... _ Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, Mary Jane Kelly _ . They were all down for a routine operation, an appendectomy; nothing suspicious here. If this list was right - and it had been right so far - then he knew who the next victims were, how many more of them there would be, who the killer was, even, potentially the motive too. But the Earl had not ordered him to search for this person, and until the Earl ordered him to speak on the subject, he would not disclose the contents of the file. He could only hint, and hope, and sneer, waiting for the foolish boy to catch up.

He walked calmly back through the rain, turning his collar up against the foul autumnal weather. His suspicions had been correct, and he knew what to do now. He would just have to wait for the right moment; tonight, they were doing no more than treading water, though perhaps it might advance his cause. The other mystery, the more pressing and confusing - that of the Earl’s activities - would have to wait. He left the washing-up soaking in hot water, wringing out his sodden butler’s jacket. It was no use, his master would be suspicious if he saw how wet he was, so Sebastian darted upstairs, lightning quick, taking the servants’ stairs two at a time and running along the corridor to his room. Something was amiss, however, and before he entered he checked, as ever, for the slip of paper he kept in the door jamb in case of intruders. He had already caught the other servants snooping around and had terrified them enough with his knowledge of their comings and goings never to do it again, so why was the scrap now lying on the floor? Turning the handle carefully, he eased inside. The room was empty. He checked under the bed and in the wardrobe, but there was no one there.  _ Curiouser and curiouser. _ The bedclothes had not been turned down but they were ever so slightly ruffled, as if someone had sat there. From the imprint he could not quite tell whom, but when he went to his cupboard to change his clothes he found, to his amazement, that someone had been in there too. Only the slightest crease and suggestion of touch, and he couldn’t be sure, until he checked the underwear drawer and was brought up short by the badly folded pair of shorts on top. Suspicion crept over him as he changed his shirt, re-knotted his cravat and pulled on a new jacket.  _ Could it really be? _ He didn’t dare hope...He noticed it while he was combing his hair. His movements must have dislodged it, for he had not seen it when he came in and checked under the bed, but now the last light of day, dismal as it was, fell on a fine thread of silver that lay on the polished floorboards, the sole bit of mess in an otherwise pristine room. Pulling on his gloves, Sebastian reached down and picked it up. The hair was fine and lighter than his own, a distinct shade that, when held up to the light, left him in no doubt.

Ciel had been in his room.

He had been in his room, sat on his bed, crawled underneath it, gone through his clothes, overturned every drawer in his wardrobe - even his underwear -  _ especially _ his underwear, which looked as if it had been taken out of its place and...what? Held, examined, touched? Sebastian couldn’t understand it. He did understand one thing, however; that act that his master had wanted to hide from him, his secret adventures, his suspicious bearing...Ciel Phantomhive was investigating his own butler. Sebastian’s lip curled as he closed the door behind him and replaced the slip of paper, striding quickly towards the back-door so he could get out and bring the carriage round. Well, the Earl wasn’t as subtle as he thought, and certainly not as secretive, and he wouldn’t find anything on his servant this way. No, he would find nothing at all - not unless he asked for it. The butler quickened his pace, pulling on his greatcoat and diving out into the rain.


	15. At Night: That Butler, In His Element

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At long last, Ciel and Sebastian confront Montague John Druitt. But while Ciel expects to solve the mystery of Jack the Ripper, he finds out more about himself and his butler during the outing than about his suspect - and leaves with twice as many questions as before...

The rain hammered on the roof of the carriage, the Earl safe inside, his servant drenched up above. Sebastian turned up his coat collar and tucked his hair behind his ears, but it was no good; he was soaked through, his woollen outer-clothes sodden and heavy. He thanked Satan for his foresight in bringing a disguise, if only for a dry change of clothes, and in the meantime bent double, the filthy water sliding down his long, aristocratic nose and dripping into his mouth, running into his eyes so he had to blink away the unpleasantly acidic drops, formed of smog dissolved in the evaporated scum of the Thames. Beneath the streets, a thousand culverts and ditches swelled and thundered with the weight of the rainfall, eroding the shored-up walls of crumbling plague-pits, sucking up the blood from abattoir drains, swallowing with relish the overflow from Bazalgette’s new, square sewers and coursing through basements and the foundations of houses while all the time the occupants sipped tea up above and knew nothing of the tidal wave below. The butler thought of the cholera, which had claimed his baby sister, and spat the drizzle out into the gutter, clenching his fists around the reins. It was already mid-autumn but he did not feel the cold, the scorch of recent memory keeping him alive and coursing through his veins as he thought of his master’s secrets and his own, and the fascinating, infuriating way in which they continued to intertwine, like two rotten branches of ivy that depend upon each other for support.

Ciel saw less and less as they drove on, the ever-absent, ever-present sun now sinking behind the thick swathe of cloud and smog that shrouded the city, leaving it in the brown gloaming. He was seized by a sudden, irrational fear, as it grew to be so dark that he could not distinguish the streets from the sky, a fear that, instead of crossing the Thames, they had dropped into Acheron and were traversing the many circles of Hell, thundering down and down into the stagnant rottenpockets where there was no light save that of the diabolical lake of fire. One black-gloved hand splayed against the window as he tried to see out, his breath steaming up the narrow pane, his body cramped painfully as he leaned against the carriage door. The rain came down thick and fast and nothing could be seen from within, save for a number of huge, hulking shapes that could have been anything, warehouses or wharves or waves towering above the city. He blinked until his eyes seared, the smoky air without infecting even the enclosed space of the carriage so that it became dismally dank and dingy within, and Ciel’s asthma awoke. Now he was hammering on the door, demanding to be let out, to run, to go anywhere that was not here, anywhere he could escape the mists of Hell, the swirling veils of death-like fog that seemed to secrete the river Styx below. But the carriage did not stop, and in the split second in which the mists parted, he beheld a black, monstrous serpent below him, adamant glittering in every scale along its choppy back that was as glassy and poisonous as obsidian.

A blot of sulphur flared up outside the window and Ciel stepped back and sank onto the hard leather seat, realising that the pulsating, phosphorescent orb was a street-lamp. He let out a long breath, still suffocating a little, and those lights danced before his eyes, a string of will-o’-the-wisps that the black carriage followed like a funeral hearse, the way lighted all along the bridge. The policemen had deemed it night-time now; they were running out of minutes. Ciel wished the carriage would go even faster, would take off altogether and soar over the crooked rooftops until it reached their destination, if only that they might not be late. Adrenaline coursed through his veins and he gripped the seat, leaning forward as if his very urging could make Sebastian hear him and magick the horses off the ground, sending them hurtling through space. His eyes smarted as he seemed to peer through the clouds and witness the cold, bright points of the stars, diamond pinpricks upon a canvas of void, each swirling tongue of flame white-hot and fixed on him, waiting on this night. Then the constellations resolved themselves, and he saw that they were still only gas-lamps - with the light pollution and smog, it would be impossible to see the heavens from down here. Ciel seemed to recover his senses and brought out his watch, finding that only twenty minutes had passed since they had left the house. They were almost there, barreling along the empty streets, and by the tracery of droplets on the windowpane he saw that the rain had ceased, leaving the streets spangled in gas-lit gold that shattered over the uneven stones.

Sebastian drew up on Dean Street, Soho, slowing to a quiet walk so that they might not be heard by the residents. Here the gas-lamps were few and far between, the windows of the dingy tenements almost all dark, only a handful of shades making their way along the gutter. A chill had set in, and the butler’s coat seemed to seep cold into him so that he itched to shed it like a second skin. He got down off the box and rapped softly on the carriage door. “My lord?”

Ciel stepped down and looked around him. His eyes met Sebastian’s, darkly significant. “Hurry,” he said, but his servant shook his head.

“Not yet,” he said, and glanced into the carriage, lifting up the seat. Ciel frowned as Sebastian pulled out two knapsacks, explaining, “I took the liberty of bringing a disguise for each of us, sir. It would not do to be overly conspicuous.” The Earl nodded and shivered, and Sebastian stepped into the carriage quickly, adding, “I will not be a minute, sir,” before shutting the door. There was a rustle from within as the coach creaked and rocked slightly, and Ciel stuffed his hands into his armpits and looked around again, though there was not much to see. He thought of his butler’s wet clothes sticking to him and the way in which he would peel them off, deftly, quickly, discarding them till he was wearing only his underclothes - or perhaps even less than that, till he was wearing nothing - his white body gleaming in the orange flare of the gas lamps, glittering where water droplets still clung to him, his black hair plastered over the nape of his neck and perhaps, elsewhere, plastered over other planes of skin, his taut muscles shifting as he worked a fresh shirt over his head, his long, slender limbs cramped by the narrow confines of the little black box. Everything would be done with that same quick, vicious, silent efficiency, a fierce, pulsating heat that burned off the rain and turned it to steam that condensed on the windows. Ciel thought of that vapour clinging to the pane where his hand had rested only minutes before, the bare flanks and calves resting on the seat that he had only just vacated, that might still be warm, the seat that he would take again so soon, and -

The Earl clenched his teeth so suddenly that he ended up biting his cheek and his tongue at the same time, the unpleasant tang of blood flooding his mouth. It helped to draw his mind away, though, if only for a second, and that was good. He sucked in the cold air a little too sharply and was rewarded with a coughing fit, at which he remembered Sebastian’s warning about remaining inconspicuous, and tried to repress his shudders without much success. He held his fists so tightly that he could feel the fabric of his gloves stretching, but he didn’t care - anything to take his mind off that steamed-up carriage. He had just succeeded in changing his splutters into hiccups when the door opened again and his butler emerged, now clothed in a plain, dark suit with a cloth cap into which his hair was tucked. Ciel blinked, trying to process the change. He had never seen his butler in disguise, though he knew the servant used it as one of his many tools in carrying out his master’s orders, and the image that rose to his mind now was that of the photograph pinned to the corner of Sebastian’s criminal record, the image of the swarthy, vicious man who had a certain kind of unnerving allure. Ciel remembered his recent train of thought and swallowed his bile, climbing into the carriage. His butler made to follow him, but Ciel said, “Sebastian - wait outside. That’s an order.” The servant raised an eyebrow, but only bowed and tipped his cap as the Earl shut the door.

Ciel was not good with the many buckles and buttons of his attire, and it took a good bit of wriggling to get out of his usual clothes. He had got better at dressing himself of late, but the older he got the more conscious he was of this inability, so the slight improvement did not register as much as the shame of his dependence. Only once he had at last succeeded in stripping down to his underclothes did he notice that he had forgotten to close the curtain on one of the carriage doors. Thankfully it was dark outside and dark within, so there was barely the smallest chance of someone having seen him, but that also happened to be the side on which his butler lurked, and all the blood rushed to his face when he thought of his servant having witnessed his indignity. He pulled the curtains firmly shut, short of breath. To think that Sebastian might have  _ seen _ \- and that he might have  _ thought _ ,  _ believed _ , even, that Ciel...that Ciel had  _ intended _ \- The Earl ripped one of his delicate stockings in an attempt to get it off its suspender, in the end deciding to leave them on. He pulled a rough pair of woollen socks that were slightly too big for him on over the top, and it struck him that this might well be one of the pairs he had seen in Sebastian’s drawer that day, so that his red cheeks refused to cool. The trousers, on the other hand, were a good deal too small, and Ciel wondered if they had been made for him a while ago; he never handled any of his own wardrobe, that was his servant’s job, so it was likely an old acquisition. Once he had finally fixed his belt buckle he found that the trousers pinched uncomfortably tight in several places, and wriggled miserably (to no avail), also finding that his ankles were very exposed. The boots were a bit big but fitted over the bulky socks and hid his delicate legs somewhat, for which he was thankful, but the shirt, though its sleeves were billowy, clung to his chest in a way that he resented, and this situation was not made better by the tightly-fitted waistcoat. Lastly he pulled on the jacket and cap to try and retain some warmth, for even in the carriage his breath was steam, but the sleeves of the former were too short, while the latter flopped down into his eyes -  _ at least they won’t see my eyepatch _ , he thought, and sighed. He was almost certain that he had done the boots up wrong, the buttons too, and he did his best with the tie but was disappointed by the mess he made. Finally, fuming, but thoroughly disguised, he drew back the curtain and stepped boldly from the coach, trying to make up for what he lacked in appearance in bravado.

When Sebastian saw him his eyes widened, then traversed the small, disgruntled figure from top to bottom and back up, so that Ciel squirmed and wrinkled his nose. A smirk tugged on the edge of his butler’s lips, but to the Earl’s relief the servant said nothing, only stepped forward with the slightest of sighs and re-knotted the neckerchief, Ciel blushing under his fingers. He thought he heard a giggle when he at last turned away, but if Sebastian was laughing he did a relatively good job of not showing it, and only took a deep breath, then gestured for his master to follow him along the dark alleyway. Ciel’s heart, already hammering, took on a new rhythm as he began to anticipate their next moves, his focus sharpening. Now was not the time for silly games or speculations; tonight they were working, and as such they would need to cooperate. The road surface was uneven beneath his feet, fouled with horse dung and litter and a thousand other unspeakable things, and at first Ciel struggled to get used to the appalling stench, which had been brought out with a vengeance by the rain. They were not out in the open for long, though - soon they approached a lighted public house, set a little back from the roadside, and Sebastian nodded to him, then stepped forward, knocking discreetly on the door.

A man’s face appeared in the opening, and he paused, surveying Sebastian, who whispered something in his ear. Across the street, Ciel folded his arms, already bored. What they were talking about he did not know, but they did not have time for the delay. However, in another moment Sebastian beckoned and Ciel emerged from the shadows, diffidently dropping in behind his servant. They stepped inside and the man instantly closed the door behind them, lounging back against the wall beside it. Ciel tensed - were they walking into a trap? But Sebastian seemed comfortable, at home, even, so the Earl, lurking behind him suspiciously, tried to relax too. The place was not very busy, but there were a few men hanging around the bar in groups, others in corners talking intently in pairs. Of course, Ciel hadn’t known what to expect, but knowing what the place was, it hadn’t been this. Even within, these lovers’ trysts were discreet, the men still keeping their voices down, though their eyes seemed to glow. Ciel recognised that same glow from Sebastian’s gaze and swallowed, feeling awkward. He didn’t know how to act when he was not in his role as the Earl; his life revolved around his status, and once without it, he wasn’t really sure who he was. Add to that this new, unfamiliar setting, with its unusual etiquette, and he was hopelessly lost - so it was no surprise that he jumped when a voice addressed him.

“You there - alright? Want a drink?” Ciel’s eye widened and he shied away, dumstruck. The barman, who had spoken, smiled at him. “No need to cling to mummy’s skirts.” There was a general peal of laughter from all those present and with a burst of indignation Ciel realised the man was referring to the way he hovered behind Sebastian, and reddened as he stepped away from his servant. He felt that burning golden gaze slide to him immediately, watching him with interest. But the other men only continued to laugh at his outrage, never guessing its real source, and Sebastian grinned and stepped up to the bar, so that Ciel really could have clung to him from relief.

“A pint for me and a half for the boy,” the butler said, leaning comfortably against the countertop. The heat in Ciel’s cheeks did not abate much at being described thus, nor did his outrage die down when Sebastian added in an undertone quite audible to him, “It’s his first time, go easy on him.” The barman raised his eyebrows as he mixed the drinks and inspected Ciel, but after Sebastian ordered a ha'penny pie for himself the innkeep busied himself with the food and left Ciel alone. Sebastian slid a couple of coins across the counter as he took the two, frothing glasses in hand, balancing the tray of victuals expertly on his arm and thanking the barman. Leaning in even further, he murmured something to the man, who winked at him and handed him a key, saying, “Upstairs on the right. That’ll be fourpence.” Sebastian handed over the money, as well as an extra ha’penny tip, and Ciel, whose grip on the slippery glasses was tenuous at best, followed him helplessly up the narrow stairs with another furtive glance around. He had to work hard to avoid dropping their drinks, which were wet with condensation, so he did not notice Sebastian stop until he bumped into him, spilling a sizeable head of foam onto his servant’s jacket. The butler turned around slowly, raising his eyebrows in disdain, and once they were inside the room and the door was closed he said, “I liked that jacket. I’ll claim expenses on that one.” He placed his tray down on a table, drew up a rickety chair, and began to eat with relish, devouring the steaming pie in almost one go. 

The Earl watched him, disgusted. “How hungry _were_ you?”

Sebastian eyed him darkly. “I haven’t eaten since breakfast,  _ my lord _ ,” he said, with a distinct edge of sarcasm. “Your orders left me no time for that.” He polished off the crumbs and took a swig of ale, and Ciel thought he’d never seen anyone eat so heartily nor so quickly in his life. It seemed to strike a chord within him, an odd chord that he did not know all that well, which made him even more jittery. He ground his teeth, slamming his teetering glass down on the wooden table and flinging himself down on the sagging bed at the other end of the room, letting out a cry of frustration. His servant smirked, wiped his mouth, and remarked, “There are lice in the bed.”

At once Ciel jumped up and began dusting himself down frantically, shaking his limbs in a most comical manner. Through gritted teeth, he spat, “And how would you know? Am I to understand you’ve brought lice home before?”

Sebastian settled into a chair, contemplating. “‘Brought lice home before’ - what a wonderfully domestic turn of phrase,” he sighed, and the Earl snarled at him, only inducing an even more beatific smile on his servant’s face. Sebastian looked quite at home and quite delighted with their expedition, as if they had not just entered a criminal establishment with the aim of catching a serial murderer. 

Ciel, on the other hand, wondered whether he might not have actually caught lice, so itchy and restless did he feel - then again, that might just be the coarse fabric of his disguise. He longed to rip it off and fling himself back into his own bed and free himself of all these aches and pains and urges, every little humiliation dissolving into Lethe, but he had a job to do. Clutching at his sleeves, he asked in an agitated manner, “What did you say to the man on the door?”

Sebastian raised his eyebrows. “That you were with me, that the barman knew me, and that we were waiting for one other, a well-turned out young man,” he replied. “He asked me for the password, which I gave him.”

Ciel continued to pace, his nerves no more calmed than before. “And what did you say to the barman just now?” he demanded, turning accusatory eyes on his butler.

Sebastian regarded him with amazement. “Really, young master,” he admonished. “It was not me that you came here to interrogate, but Druitt.”

Ciel tsked, shaking his head. “I know that,” he spat, turning on his heel. Sebastian sat up and changed position, leaning forwards. 

“Then you would do well to remember it,” he said, and the Earl heard the shift in his tone and came to a halt. His eyes were wide when he turned to his butler, somewhere between shock, outrage and interest. But at that moment there came a soft knock on the door and both master and servant locked eyes, then turned towards the entryway, Ciel reaching for the pistol in his back pocket as Sebastian got to his feet and deftly stationed himself by the door.

“Come in.” Ciel’s boyish voice, heard by a stranger, could have been the tone of any male adolescent, and as such Druitt fell for the trick and was half way into the room before he registered that there was more than one man inside. Sebastian shut and locked the door, leaning against it, and crossed his arms, and Ciel felt the satisfying weight of power settle upon him once more, so that he no longer minded his humiliatingly tight costume. Druitt turned to Sebastian first, who, ever the upstanding heavy, gazed measuredly back into those fine, dark eyes that so resembled a startled stag’s, until the intruder faced Ciel, seeing that he was trapped. The schoolteacher’s countenance was unlike anything the Earl had imagined: instead of the long, lascivious blonde hair, devouring eyes like a blue imitation of Sebastian’s and flamboyant costume, a pale, stricken man stood before him, his hair parted neatly and severely in the middle and combed flat against his skull, his face clean-shaven and his eyes set close together on either side of a long, narrow, slightly hooked nose. Furthermore, though he had a somewhat delicate and sensuous mouth, there was no hint of debauchery in the spartan elegance of the tastefully tailored suit, pin-striped, with the silk handkerchief and cravat the only sign of extravagance in the whole array. He looked, to Ciel’s untrained eyes, like any other fastidious Oxfordian - a little pale, a little wan, a little plain, but undeniably deserving of his rank and class and title. At least, that was what his physiognomy dictated. The Earl was not about to be duped by appearances.

“Take a seat, Druitt,” he said calmly, and the barrister’s large eyes widened still more as he beheld this boy, most certainly beautiful and most certainly not his Eliot. He glanced desperately back towards the door again, but now Sebastian was cleaning his nails with a pocket knife, and when he turned around to Ciel again he saw a cocked pistol pointing squarely at the centre of his forehead. “I said, take a seat,” the Earl reiterated, and so his captive, raising his hands helplessly, did so. Ciel drew out a chair on the opposite side of the desk, Sebastian remaining on his feet, as was his place, and so the master said, without preamble, “We are not going to hurt you as long as you comply with our requests. We simply wish to ask you a few questions. If you answer truthfully, you will be spared. If you lie, we shall find out, and you will suffer.” Here Sebastian handed him a notebook, and Ciel flipped through until he found the right page, and began to read. “Where were you on the night of August the 30th?”

Druitt’s mouth had gone slack, dumbfounded. He stammered, glancing from one to the other, trying find some way of escape. The Earl observed his agitation with interest, noting that he seemed disinclined to answer the question. It might be an admission of guilt, or it might be the opposite - that Druitt feared incriminating himself with a wrong answer. Finally those full lips resolved themselves from shapelessness, and the suspect said, “Why are you asking me this? Whom do you work for?”

Ciel paused for a second, then answered. There was no harm in telling him. “We are here on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen to interrogate you under suspicion of committing three murders in the Whitechapel area. On the night in question, one Mary Nichols was killed in her home near this place. Do you know that name?”

Druitt stammered, balked, then finally managed to shake his head vehemently. When he found his voice, he said, “I’ve never heard of her in my life.” Behind him, Sebastian made a note of this reply, though it was a pointless exercise. They were not the police, they did not do interviewing; Druitt was clearly not the murderer.

Ciel returned to the first question. “I will ask you again: where were you on the night of the 30th of August?”

This time, Druitt frowned, shrugged and scoffed, becoming resentful. “How should I know?” he asked defensively. “Who remembers such things?”

“Your friend, Eliot Smith,” Sebastian chimed in, and Ciel glanced up. Druitt twisted around quickly, his eyes wide once again. “Or at least, he claims to remember.”

“Eliot? Where is he? What have you done to him?”

Sebastian regarded the suspect coldly. “Nothing, yet,” he replied, and Druitt seemed to visibly wilt. “We questioned him and let him go.” 

Their captive seemed to remember something, for he sat up suddenly.  “And the letter?” he demanded, finding some reserve of courage that gave him enough presence of mind to ask. “He sent me a letter asking to meet here, where is he?”

Sebastian answered drily, “At home, in bed, most probably.”  


Ciel chimed in, smiling at Druitt as he turned back.  “Eliot Smith sent no letter,” he said, and the poor man opposite him seemed to deflate. “The letter was simply a lure to bring you here so we could question you. Now, I will ask you a third time. Do you concur with Eliot Smith’s statement that on the night of the 30th, you were together?”

Druitt sank deep into his chair and dropped his head in his hands. “Oh God,” he muttered, “oh God.” His hoarse breaths turned from sighs to sobs, and from thence to moans. “I’m ruined, I’m ruined, I’m ruined,” he murmured in a swift undertone. “Did the headmaster tell you about this? Oh God, he swore…”

“The headmaster said nothing,” Ciel cut in coldly. “I believe it was Smith himself who revealed the truth to us.” Sebastian nodded and Druitt raised his head, his hair, which had been so carefully slicked-down, now hanging in his eyes. The Earl glanced down at his notebook, but knew in that instant that it was all but superfluous now. Druitt was evidently not the murderer, simply a broken man who had been caught buggering his boy and was now paying the price. Still, for form’s sake, he asked his last few questions. “And where were you on the nights of September the 8th and September the 30th?”

“The 30th? You mean last night?” Druitt raised his head as something seemed to dawn on him. “You mean you’ve had a month to catch this killer, and he’s still on the loose?” A muscle in Ciel’s jaw twitched and Sebastian watched him with interest from behind the suspect’s shoulder. The point was a fair one - they had made a hash of this case thus far. “What kind of killer is he, anyway? Am I really all you’ve got?”

“I ask the questions,” the Earl replied curtly, but he was evidently shaken. He adjusted his notebook to give himself time to regain his composure, then asked again. “Have you ever visited Whitechapel? Are you known to the residents there? Do you have any relationship with the dead women Annie Chapman and Elizabeth Stride? Have you ever visited a brothel? Do you have any ties to the occult?”

Druitt rolled his shoulders, sitting up straight with the last of his sapped strength. “Look, you’ve got the wrong man,” he said, half-pleading, half-indignant. “I’ve never been to Whitechapel in my life, except on behalf of my family or my clients. I know no-one, you hear me? No-one. On the 8th of September I’d just been dismissed from my job for the scandal which you so kindly mentioned again, but also because I was experiencing some -” he stopped, pained - “health problems, emotional problems, regarding a...family condition. I have no idea who these women are, honest to God. I swear on my life, I’ve never had anything to do with a cult! Please, just leave me alone!” On this last plea, his voice rose to a shriek, and he began to rock himself, clinging to his sleeves in a gesture Ciel knew all too well, though it repulsed him. It was the gesture of a lunatic trying to cling to sanity, an attempt to feel anchored by one’s own body, an attempt he himself had made many times before. He let out a long breath and closed his notebook.

“Montague John Druitt, you are cleared of suspicion. We’re done here,” he said, glancing up at Sebastian, who had his usual impassive, implacable look, though Ciel detected a hint of  _ I-told-you-so _ underneath it. He let down the hammer of his pistol and tucked it back into his pocket as Sebastian saw out their guest, unlocking the door for him and beaming politely as he passed by. Druitt fled like a wild hare, at last overcoming his paralysis and staggering downstairs. The butler followed him out of the door and into the street until he was properly gone, to make sure he didn’t cry for help, then returned to his master. Ciel’s legs were stretched out and he sank down in his chair with a deep sigh, murmuring almost to himself, “Druitt is not the murderer.” Sebastian nodded, glancing mournfully at the now-tepid glasses of beer. He downed the half-pint anyway, in need of a drink. Ciel watched him through bleary eyes, all his exhaustion hitting him at once, and the butler smiled benevolently down at him.

“Come now, young master,” he said. “You should be getting to bed.” But Ciel waved him away when he tried to help him to his feet, still pensive and troubled.

“I was sure,” he said, his words quietly uncertain. “And what did he mean by ‘health problems?’”

Sebastian shrugged. “I suspect he was referring to the hereditary condition of lunacy which runs in his family,” he said, and Ciel blinked. “His mother was admitted to an asylum this summer; it would not surprise me if he himself has been under some mental strain, due to his dismissal.”

Ciel let out a long sigh, then repeated, “I was so sure,” murmuring it under his breath like a mantra. Sebastian raised an eyebrow. 

“It will do no good to speculate at this time of night, after such an exhausting day,” he said, reaching for his master once again. “We will take it up on the morrow.” But even after Ciel had got to his feet, he resisted the butler’s help, and the servant’s eyebrow twitched in annoyance.

“You knew,” he said slowly, squinting up into Sebastian’s face. “This whole time, you knew. You kept hinting,” he reasoned, seeing the butler open his mouth. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I am but your chess-piece, sir,” his servant replied. “You give the orders - you control my every move. I have no will of my own. Your mistakes are my mistakes, and it is not for me to advise, if you do not ask for advice.” Now Ciel was watching him resentfully, and Sebastian felt that he was dangerously close to a tantrum, so he kept his mouth shut. The boy huffed, shoving his hands into his pockets.

“And what would your advice have been, had I asked?”

Sebastian thought carefully. “I would have advised you to check your sources,” he replied, a contemplative look in his eye. “After all, who was it that recommended Druitt to you?”

Ciel frowned. “My aunt. But -” He stopped as if thunderstruck, his one blue eye suddenly huge and round. “What the devil are you suggesting?”

The butler shook his head, a bland, polite smile fixed on his face. “Nothing, my lord. It was only an idle thought. Shall we return to the mansion?”

Ciel’s reply was frosty to cover his confusion and alarm. “I think that would be best,” he said haughtily, and they walked out the door and down the stairs, never once looking at each other as they passed through the main parlour of the inn where only the sots remained. The barman gave a low whistle, perceiving a domestic quarrel to have taken place, but his comment of,  _ “That bad, is it?”  _ was lost on the pair as they vanished into the night. And when they reached the carriage Ciel sank down onto the seat, overburdened and exhausted, a heavy heat behind his eyes like tears that would not fall, his head throbbing as he leant against the cool glass and watched another carriage roll by, much like their own, with blind and bleary indifference. And as Sebastian received no orders, he too ignored the rival coach and drove off, out of the East End, along the waterfront, across the bridge, all the way back to the Northwest, where sleep awaited them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ciel doesn't know what's hit him. Things are steaming up...Thank you for all your continued love and support, I really appreciate it. I've been thinking of writing an article or two on Black Butler, so who knows - maybe a link to that will appear on the next update...?


	16. At Break of Day: That Butler, Running Out of Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: very graphic gore. It seems there's no rest for the wicked, as Ciel and Sebastian rush off to inspect another murder even more brutal than the last, and Ciel finds his frustration and exhaustion building to a fever pitch, so that he and his butler seem to drift farther and farther apart.

Ciel awoke early in the morning to the sound of thundering footsteps. Outside and in, it was utterly black, and some more of that icy smog had seeped in through the chimney, so that he was seized by a coughing fit as he struggled upright, trapped in the dark hollow of his bed with the curtains shut tight on either side. There was a banging somewhere below and his breath became even shallower, one large, bony hand coming up to clutch at his chest as he hyperventilated, scrambling for his senses. He had been in the deep sleep of exhaustion and the tatters of abstract, disturbing dreams still clung to him so that he struggled to snap out of it, terror washing over him in ice-cold waves. Who was in the house? An enemy - Jack the Ripper? He struggled to recollect the previous days’ events; there was too much information to process, too much had happened, he could not ground himself in reality. Then the footsteps seemed to be outside his door, very close, and so he did the only thing he could and retrieved the pistol from underneath his pillow, drawing back the hammer with shaking hands, locking it in place, removing the safety catch and waiting, trembling, sweating in the dead of night. He heard the door handle turn, the heavy tread of a tall man, then the curtains swished back and he thrust the muzzle of his pistol into the face of the intruder, his finger on the trigger.

Sebastian’s eyes were wide in the gloom and the polished black barrel of the gun looked very dark against the pallor of his skin. There was a moment where the Earl did not move, the hammer of his gun still drawn back, his index finger twitching on the trigger, and even as his mind began to wake up he wondered if it would not be better to shoot his servant after all - and then his butler’s white-gloved hand closed around his wrist, firm but gentle, applying a bit more pressure when Ciel did not move so that, by degrees, he relinquished the weapon, let down the hammer, and tossed the pointless thing aside. A sheen of sweat glistened on his brow, matting his silver hair, which had not been washed for some days, the shadows turning his eyes to black pits. Sebastian did not move or change his position until his master did, upon which he announced, slightly breathlessly, “My lord, the Yard are here.” The Earl’s features seized with fear again, but his servant shook his head, smiling slightly. “There has been another murder.”

At that, Ciel seemed to relax somewhat, slumping against his pillows. He drew his legs up to his chest and looked as if he might even cry, or at the very least go back to sleep, but after a moment of internal struggle he uncurled and climbed out of bed, staggering slightly with exhaustion. Sebastian caught him, his hand upon his waist, and for a second, it seemed that the Earl leaned into his touch; then he broke away, pulling his night shirt over his head and standing, utterly naked, his feet apart, his back to Sebastian, his face bowed so that his fringe fell into his eyes, and muttered, “Quickly.” The butler’s eyes flared up and gleamed and he licked his lips slightly, hidden from his master’s view, and perhaps that was for the best - this brazen show was utterly delectable, the despair and confidence etched into every pale line of the Earl’s body such that Sebastian could hardly restrain himself from leaping on him there and then. Somehow, he managed to hold off, and went to the wardrobe, dressing his master quickly and quietly and trying not to inhale the scent of his unwashed skin more deeply than was necessary. His hands were quick and efficient and Ciel could not help admiring that same burning energy, so thoroughly focused and direct, that he had mused on the night before, while his butler had been changing in the carriage. He blushed to remember that, but thankfully the candlelight was inconstant enough that he didn’t think his servant saw the redness in his cheeks.

It was little more than a quarter of an hour since Ciel had awoken by the time he descended the stairs, and there, in the midst of the dark hallway, bruise-like shadows ringing their eyes, stood a pair of Inspectors in bowler hats. One of them was unknown to him and the other was Abberline; he realised that they might well have not woken Randall yet, indeed might have passed over him altogether in deferring to Ciel, and that brought a nice sense of superiority that buoyed him along and into his carriage. Abberline hurried up to him before he shut the door. “Er, my l-- ah, Earl Phantomhive,” he said awkwardly, his voice urgent and hushed, “may I join you?” Ciel frowned, raising an eyebrow, so he went on, “I need to explain the facts to you, it would be best if we did so on the journey - not to lose time.”

He looked so plaintive that the Earl nodded. On the box, Sebastian’s expression soured, and he made a point of closing the carriage door with a very dirty look that Ciel did not miss. His heart stopped. Had Sebastian found out about the file? No, he couldn’t have, he would have said something. He had seen Ciel with Abberline the day before, though, so he might suspect - and there was a chance, just a minute chance, that he knew that Ciel had been in his room. An angry scarlet rose in the Earl’s cheeks but he turned away and listened to Abberline instead, the carriage rattling out of the drive. “Well?” he asked, and the Detective Inspector nodded, producing a scrappy little notebook.

“We haven’t had time to compile a case file yet; I thought it best that we go straight to you, since Randall doesn’t have a clue. Do you know who the killer is?” he asked anxiously, and for the second time that night the question grated on Ciel’s nerves. _No,_ he wanted to shout, _I don't know and I don’t care_ \- but that would not do. He could not lose his reputation, it was his entire world. He may have been wrong about Druitt, but...surely Sebastian had another candidate, another suspect ready? _And if he did, why weren’t we already investigating him?_ an infuriating voice in his head asked, and he told it to do something that would have made the horses blush. Oh, he was losing it; couldn’t he get a single night’s sleep, a moment of rest? Why was he forever surrounded by this web of mystery and crime, why could he never escape his enemies? They taunted him, they followed him every waking moment, dogging his footsteps on street corners, wearing his _own_ _uniform_ \- he cut himself off at that train of thought. What was it that Sebastian had said the night before? _Check your sources_. Ciel massaged the ache in his head. Surely his butler couldn’t mean that Madam Red was connected to the killer? 

Dimly, he recalled seeing another fancy carriage pass them by on their way out of Soho, and sat bolt upright. Soho was beside Whitechapel; half of the victims had come from Soho. Did that mean he’d seen the killer coming in, and, like the fool he was, had done nothing? His blood ran cold. Turning to Abberline, he asked, “What was her name?”

The Inspector blinked, startled. “Oh, it was - she was identified as Catherine Eddowes.” Now that Ciel looked at him properly, he saw that the Inspector’s face was ashen. What was it about this murder that could cut up even the inimitable Abberline? “She - she was in a bad way, so it took...a few witnesses to identify her,” he stammered on, and the Earl gripped the edge of the seat tightly. He had let the murderer walk right in; this was his fault, for not acting the night before, for being lazy, selfish, blinded by his own needs and exhaustion.

“What did he do to her?” he asked in a tone of trepidation, and Abberline cleared his throat.

“I think it’s best you see for yourself.” He scratched the back of his head and, glancing to where Sebastian sat out front, asked, “What about him?”

Ciel turned his face away. “What about him?” He didn’t want to admit that he had stolen the file, since Abberline didn’t know and he couldn’t be sure how the man would react, and he also didn’t want to admit that in recent days his thoughts around Sebastian had been confused, to say the least. He didn’t know who his servant was anymore, what role he played, and he didn’t know what exactly it was they wanted from each other, though he knew that he himself wanted something very intensely, something indefinable, untouchable, and he sensed that Sebastian wanted something with equal magnitude. It was all so frustrating - he was so knowledgeable in the world of crime and punishment and cruelty, and yet when it came to matters like this, he knew nothing, nothing at all.

Abberline took his silence for discretion. He turned to look out the window nervously, restless, and muttered, “I’m not sure if you should see her after all.” He wondered if he had made the right choice. Ciel was still barely more than a child, the same age as his own younger brother, and to think that he was being exposed to such corruption and vice - it didn’t sit well with the Inspector. He knew that if the Earl’s parents had been alive they would not have wanted this, and, though it was not his place, he had tried to take on a more older-brotherly, parental stance in the boy's company. It was true, he felt affection for him; who wouldn’t, with such a sad life story and tenuous position? Of course Ciel didn’t always make it easy, but Abberline was confident in his Christianity and knew that the harder it was to love one’s neighbour, the harder one had to try. He smiled slightly, his tired eyes almost tearing up as he looked out the window, and thought of his efforts towards the young Earl and the bond of growing friendship between them.

They were crossing the bridge when Ciel roused himself. “Give me the facts,” he said, and the Detective Inspector blinked out of his reverie.

“O-of course,” he replied, flipping through his notebook again. “She was found at half-past one this morning in Mitre Square, her throat cut and her skirts over her head. There were many different bodies of police and the local neighbourhood watch around, but oddly enough none of them saw or heard anything and, since the Square is enclosed, it is surprising that the murderer escaped so easily. All those apprehended were cleared of suspicion. She was examined in the street by a local doctor, Dr. George William Sequeira, who said that he thought the killer had little anatomical knowledge and that the murder would have been committed in the darkest part of the Square, where there would still be enough light for the operation to be performed. He said she would have died instantly.” Abberline drew in a deep, steadying breath, then added, “No one heard anything. There were policemen, firemen and many informal watches on duty, but all of them missed the murderer, I don’t know how.” He sighed, frustrated, and shook his head, and Ciel saw that he was almost distraught. 

He smiled and placed a hand on the Inspector’s arm. “We’ll find him,” he said confidently, his stomach churning.

When they arrived at the Yard the grey light of dawn was not yet spreading in the eastern sky, but the street-lamps, which had seemed so magical to Ciel hours before, were on the point of being extinguished. They dismounted quickly and made their way up to the mortuary, and the Earl noticed that there were far more policemen on duty than before, milling around the headquarters at this ungodly hour. When he questioned Abberline about this, the Inspector shrugged. “We’re doing everything we can to catch him,” he sighed, despondent. Behind Ciel, Sebastian moved deftly, eyeing up the bobbies with a wary glance. He didn’t like policemen at the best of times, let alone early in the morning, after barely a wink of sleep. They climbed the polished stairs, their footsteps echoing, and the doors to the mortuary swung open before them, revealing a grisly sight.

The sheet was turned down, revealing the face and bust of Catherine Eddowes. Her hair was scraped back from her face, thick, black hair, tangled and matted and riddled with still-crawling lice, but hair that might once have been beautiful, in the right circumstances. Her eyes were closed and from the forehead down her face was irretrievably mauled, gaping cuts disfiguring her beyond recognition, the lower half of her face ripped away so that all that could be seen was gore, her neck, too, gaping wide, so that from the cheekbone to the collarbone she was smeared with blood. Ciel slapped a hand to his mouth, stepping closer and dropping his cane unconsciously. The bile rose in his throat, tears burning his eyes, but he forced himself to look, moving forwards till he was right beside her. There was something so inhuman about this corpse and yet horribly close to humanity, something so beastly about such a violation of the flesh. Even during his time in the Underworld, the Earl had never seen such blatant savagery; organ harvesting was done with a degree of careful precision, and ritual murder and sacrifice were often performed by a skilled surgeon, to make the ceremony all the more aesthetically pleasing to its witnesses. This, on the other hand, was blind barbarism - it was hard to believe that a human being did this. He turned away, unable to stomach any more. It seemed that there was still more to come, however; the coroner stepped forward and turned down the sheet even further with a grave look, revealing her desecrated abdomen. 

Ciel couldn’t bear to look and yet he couldn’t look away, he had to see, and now he was gazing into her entrails, her life’s blood congealing, a black hole where her organs had been, now empty of all life. The coroner’s voice was faint and distinct behind him as he announced, “He took her womb and left kidney.” The killer had made a hash of it - anyone could see that - the butcher had slashed her open and nicked holes in her bowels so that faeces mixed in with the blood, the whole lower half contaminated, defiled, utterly destroyed. Then that white sheet rose up again and it was all gone, effaced, covered, except for the sickening black shadow underneath the shroud that still showed through. Ciel felt it burn into his retinas and staggered, clenching his hand over his mouth so tight that he thought he might end up like her, retching and refusing to spit out the bile. A hand came up and held his elbow, keeping him from falling, but he shoved it aside and whacked the stranger with his stick, smacking him in the stomach in an attempt to break free.

Sebastian felt the blow to his solar plexus and tightened his core so that he did not show outwardly how it winded him. His face set in stone, he watched as Ciel threw his stick away from him and aimed a kick at a metal dustbin, trashing everything within sight save the body. He did not scream or cry or shout, but his vicious, systematic destruction of everything he laid his hands on said enough. Abberline watched him, horrified, the whole room watched him, and Ciel just wished they would go away with their stares and their judgement and their inhumanity, wished he could send every one of them and this whole damned, crooked city up in smoke, wished he could raze London to the ground and start again, create Eden, rid the world of the stupid, animal sin that made them be so senseless, so heartless, so depraved...Finally he took his stick and, with a surprising show of strength, smashed it over his knee, tossing it into the crushed dustbin before turning his back. But as he was about to leave, the door opened and a constable ran in, glancing peremptorily round at the shocked room before he announced, “Sir, we’ve found a clue!”

At once, the mortuary seemed to come to life, emptying like clockwork as if nothing had happened. Ciel hung his head, panting heavily, then stepped out with the rest, following the policeman. Abberline said, “You can tell him,” to the hesitant Constable, so the latter addressed his report to Ciel.

“Sir, we found a piece of the woman’s apron,” he said, bobbing respectfully, then producing a paper bag in which, presumably, the evidence resided. The Earl reached out for it but the other held back, saying, “You won’t want to touch it.”

Ciel raised an eyebrow. “Why not?”

The Constable held the bag gingerly, looking at it in distaste. “It is - fouled, sir,” he said, shamefacedly, “with blood and - er, with the faeces of the dead woman.” The Earl’s eyes widened, but the policeman continued with his report. “Found in Goulston Street on the steps of Wentworth Model Dwellings, sir, beneath an - an inscription, which said -”

“What did it say?” Ciel cut him off in his eagerness, his eyes suddenly bright. 

The man looked on doubtfully. “‘ _The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing_.’ The City and the Met were in dispute as to whether we should wash it off, in case there was a riot.”

“And?” Abberline cut in, his focus sharp and urgent. The Constable shrugged.

“They were still disputing when I left, sir, but it is my belief that they will wash it off. They don’t want another p-p -” he paused, struggling for the right word - “porgam…?”

“Pogrom,” Ciel cut across, recognising the Russian word. This was a serious blow, but he suspected that the killer was not the one who had left the graffito. After all, why would he incriminate himself in such a manner? Unless he wanted to throw the police off the scent, and make them go after the Jews. Either way, the Earl was not interested in the petty racial squabbles of the working classes; it was simply a question of money, that was all, and in reality the Jews were hardly better off than the Gentiles if they were living in Whitechapel. He turned away, allowing Sebastian to take the paper bag and peer into it. The butler drew his long nose back sharply, his face set. Ciel was thankful that he didn’t have to look at another bit of baseness today - he had had enough to last a lifetime. Drawing his hat down over his eyes, he sighed deeply, and began to descend the stairs, telling Abberline, “We’ll tell you when we find him.” The Inspector seemed taken aback by this arbitrary dismissal, but he touched his cap respectfully and turned away, watching as the butler shepherded his master out of the door and into the carriage. It seemed as though Ciel did not know it, but he was clearly no longer in control; the artful way in which Sebastian puppeteered his master! Abberline shook his head, then an idea dawned on him. When he had a moment to spare, he would go downstairs and see what was in that file. Maybe the Earl was too dependent on his servant to act on his own - perhaps he needed Abberline to step in and help him out.  _ If he was my brother, I’d do that for him, _ the young Inspector thought, and frowned, disquieted.

Sebastian and Ciel were of the same mind, and the master did not even need to communicate with his servant until they arrived at the crime scene. The streets were almost impassable when they got there, crowded with onlookers and paparazzi - since the last two murders, the case had become a high profile one, which meant all the more pressure for the Earl. He drummed his fingers against his thigh and wished he hadn’t destroyed his stick, for he could do with it now to part the crowds, even just for something to hold onto other than Sebastian. There was little to see in Mitre Square, however; the only definite was that, had the murderer looked in any way suspicious, he would have been spotted.  _ Who could pass unheeded by all those police? _ Ciel wondered, grinding his teeth. He still had no idea who Jack the Ripper was and he had already let four murders slip past him - was he really so lax? They drove on a bit until they reached the address of the apron scrap, but the police were handling that too and the graffiti was already half gone. One thing was for certain; the hand and spelling were crude enough for it to be unlikely for it to belong to an aristocrat or educated man, and if they were still acting on the belief that a medical person had committed the murders then the murderer could not have left the note.

By the time the sun rose he was exhausted. Throwing himself back into the carriage, he rapped angrily on the ceiling with his knuckles, regretting it a second later as they smarted. They returned home through the wakening streets, passing the crowds of drudges in the East End, the theatricals of the South Bank still slumbering after the previous night’s performances, the servants in the West End opening doors and windows and curtains, beating carpets and carrying bottles back and forth from the milkman’s cart, chatting to each other as they worked. Not for the first time, Ciel wished he could belong to that normal, leafy, secluded life, the life he had had before. He wished for once that his butler, too, could be like the other servants, no special significance in his glances, no secret knowledge in his heart, no brain riddled with untold vices. Most boys his age would be in school at this time, perhaps some were still tutored at home; they would be opening their Greek and Latin textbooks, drawing up their equation sheets, a mother’s kiss or a playfellow’s grin keeping them alive until lessons ended and they were let loose, either in the boarding school compound or in the manor house, where they could run free. Granted, Ciel had a good deal more freedom than most adolescents, but with that freedom came responsibility and fear, a fear of making the wrong choices, a fear of being left vulnerable to the outside world with nothing to protect him. For it was true - the outside world was cruel, and the world that these other, “normal” boys inhabited was no more real than his own. It was all a facade, an attempt by the wealthy to stave off the ills of the world through idleness and forgetfulness. He turned away, disgusted.

When they arrived back at the townhouse, the other servants had already made their best attempts to begin the daily chores in their leader’s absence. Sebastian sighed as he observed the rather brutal cut that Finny had given the hedgerows, and sniffed suspiciously at the cold morning air, wondering if he detected just a hint of burning from the direction of the kitchen. But then he was opening the curtains in his master’s bedroom and airing the rooms and stoking the fires and laying the breakfast table, and there was no time to be fastidious. He thought of his master’s tantrum and his face tightened, his jaw clenching. It had been remarkable to witness, no doubt about that, but the boy was foolish if he thought he could just go around destroying things. He had used to conduct himself in that manner much more frequently, and it seemed as if the strain of recent events had brought about a relapse - could he be regressing? Sebastian hoped it would have no effect on his health; an ill master was the most demanding master of all. Still, he did not know whether the Earl had taken his hint from the night before as to the identity of Jack the Ripper, and perhaps in the cold light of the morning and the barbarism they had just witnessed it would be even harder for him to believe. There were certain facts of circumstantial evidence that concurred, however, such as the Ripper’s escape. They were looking for a man, just as the Earl was looking for a man, and not one person had yet considered that the killer might actually be a woman.  _ She’s clever _ , he thought as he made the tea.

When he reached the breakfast room Ciel was seated at one end of the table looking out of the French doors, which were open. The breeze swayed the curtains and the sky had cleared a little so that, from their slightly raised vantage point, the view was almost enjoyable. The Earl seemed not to see it, only ate mechanically whatever Sebastian placed in front of him, his brow furrowed, his fists clenched around his cutlery and glass. The butler appraised him, unobserved. It seemed his master had hit a brick wall for good this time.

Ciel’s mouth opened, and he began to recite the facts of the case in a monotone under his breath. “Mary Nichols, murdered 30th August, womb removed. No screams. Annie Chapman, found dead in her rooms, 8th September, womb removed, no screams. Elizabeth Stride, murdered 30th September, womb intact, throat cut, still warm. Catherine Eddowes, found 1st October, throat cut, jaw damaged, womb and left kidney removed -” He clutched at his stomach suddenly and squeezed his eyes tight shut, slamming his other hand down on the table. When he recovered, he dropped his head in his hands, and Sebastian raised his eyebrows.

“So dispirited, sir?” Ciel did not reply. The butler prodded a little further. “It is unlike you to give up so easily.”

“I have nothing,” the boy murmured, muffled by his hands. “There’s nothing.”

“Oh?” Sebastian stacked the crockery on the sideboard carefully as he said, “I don’t think that’s remotely true, sir. I don’t believe for one second, my lord, that you can really lie to yourself so well as to believe that.”

Ciel jerked upright at the soft, dangerous tone, pinning his servant with a furious stare. “How dare you talk out of turn -”

“Did I? You’re quite sure you weren’t waiting for me to help you out of this mess, young master?” Sebastian watched him intently, imperiously, his golden eyes blazing. “You asked me last night for my advice, and yet it seems you already want more...how greedy.”

“I’m not greedy!” the Earl shouted, slamming his hands down on the table and getting to his feet. “Tell me what you know!”

Sebastian shrugged, polishing the silverware. “As you wish, my lord,” he replied, his fingers a blur. He cleared his throat, the facts clear in his mind. “On the 8th of September of this year, you received summons from the Queen asking you to take on this unusual case of a serial killer who performed hysterectomies on his victims. You ordered me, your butler, on that same day, to ‘find the killer, whoever he is.’ I followed your orders to the letter, sir, and the only suspect I found that fitted our criteria - a medical man without alibis for the nights in question - was a suspect suggested to you by your aunt, Angelina Dalles, when she visited you the day after the second murder. This suspect was not, in fact, a medical man, though his family contained medical practitioners, and he did not have a clear motive. We pursued him and interrogated him and ruled him out last night, when we saw a carriage of a similar make to our own driving through Whitechapel. I did not see the occupant of the carriage, but I felt the coach itself was somewhat familiar. A few hours later, Catherine Eddowes, the fourth victim, was found dead. None of the men who fit the criteria could have committed this murder.”

Ciel gnashed his teeth, tearing at his hair and slumping back down in his chair. “That doesn’t tell me anything,” he protested, but his butler’s face was closed, utterly unsympathetic.

“I do not think you were listening very hard, sir,” he said coldly. “Must I repeat myself?”

“No! No, you’re wrong, there must be something, someone else!”

Sebastian bore this in icy silence. He was not sure how much more of this he could take, but he certainly wasn’t going to tell the brat himself. With a long sigh, he repeated, “None of the men who fit the criteria could have committed this murder,  _ my lord _ .” Incensed, Ciel made to smash his glass, but the butler’s fingers closed around his wrist. “Are you going to destroy more of your own possessions?” he asked mildly, extracting the crystal from his master’s grip. “Or have you finished with your tantrums for the day?”

“Get out,” Ciel hissed, his teeth gritted, his eye and face burning. “Get  _ out! _ ”

“Not until you are calm, my lord,” Sebastian replied, remaining in place. “I will say this once more only.” He took a deep breath. “ _ None of the men who fit the criteria could have committed this murder. _ ”

This time, Ciel did not lash out. He only sat completely still in his chair, defeated, his one exposed eye devoid of light, and repeated, “‘None of the men who fit the criteria could have committed this murder.’” He lowered his voice still more, murmuring it under his breath. “‘None of the men who fit the criteria could have committed this murder. None of the -’”

He broke off abruptly, and the silence seemed so complete that it became solid and hard like diamond. The Earl’s eye was fixed on the middle distance, gazing into eternity, but his mind was not vacant, not in slightest. Sitting up slowly, then getting to his feet, he turned to Sebastian, his countenance burning with intent. “None of the  _ men _ ,” he said, and there was a question in his voice. “You’re saying...that there are  _ women _ who could have done it?”

The butler couldn’t believe it. There must be a God after all, or a Devil, for such a miracle to occur. He nodded calmly at his master, disguising his scorn and relief. “Indeed, my lord,” he said. “It is a possibility we have not explored. After all, your orders were for male suspects. I had considered that there might be a female killer, but of course, without your approbation, I could not follow the idea up.”

Ciel tsked and shook his head. “Why didn’t you tell me before?” he wondered, incredulous. Sebastian snorted.

“You did not ask, my lord,” he replied. “I am but your humble chess piece, your knight. You are the king; you must direct me. Without your hand and all the faculties of your mind to move me, I can do nothing.”

Ciel chuckled darkly, his expression turning sour. “ _ Bastard _ ,” he hissed, and the butler smirked, though he was still too angry and wary to openly laugh. The longer it dawned on the Earl, the more blind he realised he’d been. But then the full weight of his servant’s words hit him and he paused, frowning, and said, “And your advice? What you said last night, about...sources?”

Sebastian’s eyes gleamed, but he said nothing. “You have already comprehended my meaning, sir,” he replied. “Indeed, I think you have everything in your power now to catch the Ripper. You need only give the right orders.”

But Ciel shook his head. “No, I don’t,” he contradicted, “because I don’t know who…” He trailed off.  _ ‘A suspect suggested to you by your aunt, Angelina Dalles, when she visited you the day after the second murder.’ ‘Check your sources.’ ‘After all, who was it that recommended Druitt to you?’ ‘A carriage of a similar make to our own, driving through Whitechapel.’ _ The bits and pieces floated through his mind, the little clues and hints, the flotsam and jetsam, the deliberate trail of breadcrumbs that Sebastian had left for him. Ciel couldn’t see where it was leading, except - no, that was a lie, he could see it after all, but he didn’t like what he saw. Could Sebastian really think - could Madam Red really be - but after what he had seen today, the barbarism, it...it was horrific, it couldn’t be - a woman like her, a  _ woman _ ! no, he couldn’t countenance it. Shaking his head vehemently, the Earl pushed past his butler, his face thunderous. There was only one thought on his mind; find out who Sebastian really was, what it was that he had done, and then - he wasn’t sure yet, but he wanted revenge. That was it, really; he wanted revenge against his butler. And he would get it, tonight, after he had found a safe time and place to read and process the contents of that police file.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I messed with the dates of Catherine Eddowes' murder and Elizabeth's Stride's, as the two murders actually occurred on the same night - but that didn't serve the story too well. The bit about the evidence is true, and racism and anti-semitism were huge problems in London at the time, due to an influx of refugees from Eastern Europe after the Russian "pogroms", a kind of anti-Jewish genocide that paved the way for the Nazis' kristallnacht...chilling stuff. Unemployment rates were also high at the time, which is why riots precipitated. (This country's history isn't much more gloriously anti-racist or anti-inequality that any other country's and the Jack the Ripper case has always fascinated me as a terrible symptom of Britain's biggest social issues. Anyway, I'll stop being a history/politics/psychology geek...)
> 
> We're nearly there; Ciel will crack soon enough. Please leave comments and kudos if you liked this chapter, you know I love to hear your thoughts xx


	17. In the Daytime: That Butler, Revealed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ciel sits down to do some proper reading and discover the truth about his servant. But fear surrounds him and confusion is closing in as he loses sight of his aims and morals, unable to tell the difference between truth and lie, danger and desire any more...

It took the whole day for Ciel to read Sebastian’s file. Remarkably, he experienced not a single interruption; though they were in the midst of the chase and by rights Scotland Yard should be calling every five minutes, silence reigned in the mansion, and Sebastian was hardly in evidence. He started by tripping his way up to the library, giddy with fury, and unlocking the cabinet, but once it was unlocked the heart-stopping fear that someone would walk in stole over him and wrapped his heart in ice, so he simply stood in front the door, stock-still, silent, trying to hide that the cabinet-front was ajar. In this posture he remained ten minutes, the beating of his heart louder than canon fire, until finally he could maintain the pretense no longer and had to snatch his document from the shelves. But then there was the business of finding the right one, for he realised that he had hidden the file a little too successfully, and that led to the inevitable fear that it had been removed by some magical, evil intervention, that it had been spirited away, or even hadn’t existed in the first place. Anxious fingers flicked through page upon anonymous page, thumbing the weathered cardboard edges of each section. Eventually, however, the tattered fringes of the folder made themselves known, and Ciel reached in slowly and gingerly, drawing the file down as if it were accursed, poisonous, a thing of great, inherent malice.

After that, his movements were a blur. He locked the cabinet and triple-checked it, then slid along the walls of the room as if the very books had eyes, not daring to breathe. The corridors were the worst; they were open ground, purgatory, the only safe places stowed behind wooden barriers that seemed to mock him, the curtains rustling unnecessarily and the portraits glaring at him in an even more accusatory way than usual. He ran for a long stretch, then froze and crouched in an alcove, shaking slightly, trying not to make a sound, terrified that the butler would have heard his footsteps and was coming to investigate. Finally he got to his feet, beginning to feel indignant, and walked very stiffly and erectly to his study, where he found a fire burning in the grate. A new fear arose, the fear that Sebastian would come to top up the coal, so he clumsily stoked the blaze until it was stiflingly hot in the room; but that led to the opposite possibility that Sebastian would come to open the windows, so Ciel did it himself, barely strong enough to lift the heavy sash, nearly lopping off his own head as he failed to fix it in place before leaning out. The air was cold and sooty and he regretted his decision, but at least he had covered two eventualities. The curtains fluttered around him, waving like flags, betraying his location. There was another blood-chilling moment where he nearly dropped the file out of the window, but at last he returned to his desk and sank into his chair, slamming the papers down. Even now, he couldn’t stand the sight of them. They seemed to exude evil, a corrupting influence at the heart of their very nature, containing that odious essence that Sebastian carried on him at all times. Was Ciel so afraid of the truth? Or was he simply afraid of what he did not know, afraid of not being afraid of what he should be afraid of, but didn’t know enough about to be afraid of yet?

His mind was running rings round him. He tried to clear his head by shaking it, but truth was he was exhausted. What if he fell asleep and left the document on the table and Sebastian came in and saw it? What then?  _ Enough! _ He massaged his temples and rubbed his eyes, but did not succeed in clearing sleep from them, only made them sore. It seemed that there was no escape.

That began the second phase of investigation. Now he actually opened the file, his damp fingers lingering on the dry, soft, corroded surface of the cardboard, almost as if he was seeking to imbibe that essence simply by touching. Suddenly he could not stop touching the folder and marvelled at his own desire to hold it, not even wanting to read it anymore. When he looked at the first page, he found himself running his thumb over the words like a blind man, tracing the curlicues of each copperplate letter, unable to take in any of the information while he was dwelling so deeply on the aesthetics. He took the photograph of Sebastian off its pin, wheedling the sharp end out for fear of damaging it, and held it curling in his palm, surprised by how light it was, as if he had expected the picture to carry all the weight of the man himself, all the weight that he, Ciel, attributed to him. The upper surface was slightly greasy, a crease folded into the corner, while the back was smooth and dry. He turned it over, but there was nothing written there. The man in the photo was so similar to, and at the same time so unlike, his butler, he couldn’t help but wonder at the difference. He could have been Sebastian’s brother, his cousin, his father, even, but never the same man as the servant who washed Ciel’s feet each night and made his food. It was simply impossible that that long-haired, dark-eyed rogue with the cut lip, shadowed skull and heavy, unsmiling, recalcitrant brow could be the smirking, euphemistic, clean and clinical underling that waited at his table and made his bed. 

But then he remembered how Sebastian had looked in his disguise, walking the streets of Soho, and how he looked after every fight, spattered with blood and mud and steaming with rage, looking at any moment as if he might run after whoever it was they had encountered just to punch him once more, his blood boiling so hot that his master could feel the warmth emanating from him like an overstoked furnace. He would drop a hand on Ciel’s shoulder, a heavy, reluctant hand, and lean on him for support, his ribs so broken that he could barely stand up, his pride in shreds, the downturned corners of his mouth dripping venom. Ciel liked it when he did that - he liked it when he was vulnerable, hardly able to contain himself, a man on the edge. He liked it when Sebastian let loose, when he couldn’t hide any longer; he positively relished the sight of his servant after a brawl, the stench of his sweat and blood so potent and raw, the sound of his harsh, heavy breathing, however much he might try to keep quiet, those guttural gasps. It was Sebastian at his most vulnerable, his most naked, the closest he got to openness around his master, and Ciel wanted more than anything to replicate that effect, if only to see inside his butler’s heart. He clenched his fists on top of the desk, his body stirring already; now was his chance.

It took effort to focus in on the words, but once he started reading, he couldn’t stop. Contrary to this, however, he did not read very fast, for after each new sentence, each new piece of opaque information, he had to sit back and digest, processing everything he knew and slotting the new bit in. There were times when he wanted to stop and go back, but even after he had done no more than look at the photo and read the name at the top of the file, he already felt he was in so deep that it would be tedious to try and return. So he read, and halted, and put the folder down, sometimes even stowing it in his desk drawer, going so far as to lock the drawer, getting up, wandering round the room, round the whole house, out into the garden, donning his coat, taking a turn about the lawn until he met with Finny and was reminded of his purpose - then, and only then, could he return. The first page was information about Sebastian and his personal life; his real name (that was debatable, he could have given them a fake one), his other fake names (again, debatable), his family members, his friends, his places of residence (numerous, squalid, obscure), and his occupations.  _ That _ was fascinating to Ciel - his butler had performed many different services before he had been a butler, among them the role of a boot-blacker, when he was no more than eight years old, then of an apprentice cobbler, then moving onto manual labour, temporary jobs...the list was almost bottomless. What Ciel had not bargained for in undertaking this was the sheer boredom of police reports; he despised the toneless dryness of official documents at the best of times, and, much as he valued what was within the pages, he could not help yawning. His adrenaline, which had been at an all-time high, dropped down by degrees, and exhaustion overtook him to such an extent that he was appalled by his own tiredness. In vain did he try to focus his gaze on the black lettering - it was no good, he had stopped taking it in. And so, against his better judgement, his weariness claimed him, and before he had time to think his head was on the desk and his eyes had closed, his mouth going slack as he dropped into a deep and dreamless sleep.

*

Ciel awoke with a start, jerking upright. What had happened? Completely disorientated, he ascertained that he was in his office, noticing to his surprise that a strong wind was blowing in through the open windows and that the fire was almost extinguished.  _ Sebastian _ , he thought angrily, then his eyes flew wide. Had the butler been in? No, he remembered now, it had been he himself who had opened the window. He got to his feet and wandered unsteadily towards the sash, dropping it down with a startling thump that woke him up a little more. His face felt puffy and there was still some drool clinging to his lips from where his mouth had been agape. He wiped it away in disgust, then, recalling his purpose, darted back to the desk.

The file was gone.

Swearing, Ciel glared down at the bare, leather and mahogany surface. His hands shook and he picked up his penknife and slammed it down, puncturing the soft and the hard and gouging deep into the table. His anger somewhat vented, he turned his attention back to the catastrophe. Had Sebastian been in? Did Sebastian know? Had Sebastian got wind of the existence of the file, somehow put two and two together to make five, and stolen back his report? If so, all was lost. But then Ciel remembered the open window and glanced at the embers in the fireplace and realised that if Sebastian had been in, he would not have left the room in such a state. He might not have closed the window, in order to avoid suspicion, but he would definitely have stoked the fire - which meant he had not entered the room since the Earl went to sleep. What, then, had happened? For a horrible moment, Ciel believed he had dreamt it all; the file, the revelation, Sebastian’s photograph...but no, here was the photograph in his pocket where he had put it. He retrieved it, just to be sure, and stared at it long and hard. It had been windy outside, he remembered, so he had taken the photograph with him when he went for his walk and put it there. But where was the rest of the folder?

It could not have been stolen. He was almost certain of that. After all, it was impossible for anyone to enter the house without his servants knowing, and since Sebastian hadn’t been in, he would have prevented the other servants from entering. Tanaka was back at the mansion so it could not have been him, either - which meant the file hadn’t been stolen. Ciel wondered if he’d put the folder into the fire while he was asleep, but dismissed the idea as ridiculous; however much of a somnambulist he might be, he would never do something like that. Besides, the fire had burnt all the way down and if he had fed it it would still be ablaze. Getting to his feet, he stoked the flames now, trying in vain to get things going and only accomplishing a general, ashy dirtying of his hands. Crouching in front of the grate, he tried to wipe the coal dust from his fingers, eventually succeeding in smearing it all over his trousers instead.  _ At least they’re black. _ At ground level, however, he noticed something that he had not before - papers, spread all over the floor, flapping about in the draught from the chimney. He gasped and leapt forward, gathering the scraps to him. They were indeed the pages of Sebastian’s file, now entirely disordered, and he cursed himself for leaving the window open - the wind must have blown the thing about the room, he was lucky nothing had landed on the fire. That put another thought into his head, and he swore again, hunting all over the room for the pages. After all, if he left a single one out for his butler to find, the game was up, and he himself might miss some vital information, the key to the door in Sebastian’s mind. It took him nearly half an hour to find all of the personal details, witness statements, transfer documents and proofs of conviction, and another fifteen minutes to put them back in order. Finally, when he had worked out the order everything and was right back to where he had been only a few hours before, there came a soft knock on the door.

Ciel froze.  _ What now? _ He glanced up at the clock and started.  _ Is it really that time already? _ He must have been asleep for hours, for it was past noon. He stowed the file in the top drawer of his desk and locked it, panicking when he remembered that Sebastian could find the key. He quickly slipped it into his pocket, knowing that the butler might well have a spare, but praying that he would not think to use it. The horrible possibility crossed his mind that one or more pages from his file might have been blown out of the window altogether and fallen upon the garden where Sebastian or one of the other servants might have picked it up, but he knew now that that was almost too far-fetched, and really his mind was playing tricks on him, and if something  _ had _ gone out the window then doubtless it was lost forever and every one of his chances with it. He just had time to pick up a pen and open his blotter when the door opened.

“Luncheon is served, sir,” Sebastian said, slipping into the room. His eyes studied Ciel’s face with amusement, then dropped to his hands, perceiving how a large blob of ink pooled at the end of his poised fountain pen and splashed on the blotter. It appeared, from the pink marks criss-crossing his face and the sleepy-dust around his eyes, that the boy had been dozing moments before, and had only just managed to sit upright in order to pretend that he was busy. His lips twitching, the butler turned away, unsure whether to be scornful of the boy’s ineffectual deception or endeared to his more vulnerable self; in the end, it was a mixture of both. Ciel seemed reluctant to come and dallied a little so the butler slowed his pace, wondering if his master was going to be extra capricious today. After all, he had not taken kindly to his servant’s earlier insinuations regarding his aunt, but really Sebastian was running out of patience, and fucks to give. If the Earl refused to solve the case then the game was up; would his master really sacrifice everything out of the selfish desire to remain ignorant, after all these years? Would he really contradict every principle he had ever held in favour of this infantile need to be loved?

As soon as Sebastian was out of the room Ciel double and triple-checked the locked drawer, but it was no good - there was nothing more he could do to make it safe, he would really have to leave it at that. His stomach churning, he followed his butler down the corridor, still dizzy from sleep, the walls bending around him. The unfamiliar faces in the portraits were more frightening than ever, the familiar ones accusatory, and when he came across a portrait of the young Dalles sisters he stopped altogether, turning to face them. Their kind eyes drooped at the corners as if weighed down by teardrops, the deep sapphire blue of his mother’s melancholy and docile, the unusual red-brown of his aunt’s flashing ruby in comparison, a different, sharper kind of despair.  _ Why do they always look so sad? _ he wondered, and could not find an answer. Maybe it was the hereditary melancholy that had settled on them when they were joined with the Phantomhive clan, or maybe it was a premonition of things to come - or maybe he had never truly known his mother, maybe he still did not know her sister. He thought of the secretive, scandalous, sorrowful life of his aunt, and realised that she might well have a great many things to hide, a great many things she did not want him to know. It was entirely conceivable that she, like all the other members of the family, was in some way tainted; he had simply refused to believe it possible in his idealistic view of his parents after their death. But he should know better than anyone what a cruel and twisting force love was, he should know better than to idealise Angelina Dalles, for to idealise was to lose sight of one’s next move, and that led to no end of misfortune. In this world, one wrong move could mean death. Deliberately blinding himself could not prevent the truth from existing - it would only worsen, like a malady unattended, gangrene left to fester. Today, he was investigating his butler, trying to put all prejudice aside in favour of the truth. He had chosen truth over bias in that respect of his life; it was time he chose reality in the other.

Lunch was not a warm affair. Ciel was tense and lost in thought, refusing most of what his butler offered him so that Sebastian had to persist in order to get him to consume anything, with the result that the Earl became more and more wound up and defensive. They barely spoke a word to one another but what they _did_ say seemed barbed, as sharp as a blade, every remark cutting and overly meaningful even when intended to keep the tone light. There was a sort of focused fatalism about their relationship, Ciel thought, the inevitability of a bright star drawn into a collapsar only for both to be obliterated. He shook the comparison away uncomfortably - all this lunar nonsense was getting to his head, when had he become so fanciful?  _ I sound like a cultist _ , he thought, and felt suddenly cold in spite of the warm fire, his lunch a rock in the pit of his stomach. As soon as it was possible, he tried to excuse himself, but Sebastian raised an eyebrow and paused at the door. “My lord?” he said, a question in his voice.

The Earl brushed him off self-consciously. “What?”

“You have no orders for me?” He seemed surprised. 

Ciel tsked irritably. “Must I dictate everything to you, Sebastian?”

The servant’s eyebrows rose still higher; it was not often that his master used his name. “No, my lord,” he replied reticently, trying to sense what was on the boy’s conscience. 

Ciel brushed past him and out of the door. “Good. Don’t disturb me until dinner time,” he replied, already receding down the hallway. His voice was carried over his shoulder, his face turned away. Sebastian narrowed his eyes, frowning. It was not like his master to refuse tea and cake - usually, that was the highlight of the day for him - so what could he be doing that meant he required such silence? Was he thinking over the case, or was he going to go to sleep again? That brought a smile to the butler’s face, although he didn’t think it likely. Judging by the state of the Earl’s face at noon, he had slept deeply enough that morning for several nights. Sebastian had half a mind to catch up with him and ask him for the truth, but he knew he wouldn’t get it, and then the boy would only be more on his guard. No, better to leave it and wait for tonight. When he was ready, Ciel would reveal all; after all, Sebastian was his only confidante, and sooner or later even the proud Earl wouldn’t be able to resist confessing. 

At first, as he tottered away giddily on half a glass of wine, Ciel was proud of himself for managing to give such an order under the circumstances. Only when he had returned to his study and shut the door, however, did he realise how he might have aroused Sebastian’s suspicions, and cursed. There was no helping it now - he was in deep, and either way, he couldn’t keep the file, its contents or his knowledge a secret for much longer. Once he had finished perusing it and pondering it, he would confront Sebastian, and then there would be no more secrets between them. He settled back into his chair and stoked the fire again, kicking the wooden logs with the toe of his boot so that they crackled. He couldn’t help picking up the file, though it took him a long time to summon up the courage to unlock the drawer, and once he had found his place again (which was surprisingly difficult; he found himself re-reading sections over and over, since they were so boring he had forgotten them entirely) he took up where he left off. This time, he read almost uninterrupted, though he continued to have to put the papers down every now and again and pretend to stoke the fire with an absent mind, so disturbed did he feel. It was his position that gave him the most pain, for he had slept funny earlier and now his back would not settle - this was one of the many downsides to growing so tall so quickly, all the back-ache that came with it. In vain did he squirm uncomfortably in his seat, though he piled up the cushions, then chucked them one by one on the floor. It was simply impossible to feel comfortable here, in his father’s house, with his butler so close by as he read of his crimes. He considered going out for a walk and reading in the fresh air but decided it would be too dangerous, all things considered; his butler might spot him and then the game would be up, to say the least of what might happen if it started to rain, or the wind stole the papers out of his hand. No, he would stay put and read his way through it, though all the bones in his body began to ache.

At some point he got up and began to pace, and then he found he could not sit down again. Exhausted restlessness possessed him and, his eyes glued to the page, he began to move unconsciously, first of all turning in neat circles, then progressing through a waltz-step to a foxtrot to a tango, his hips wiggling just for something to do. Eventually he realised he was really quite warm, and broke off to stare longingly at the closed door and window; but again his good sense overcame his longing, so he stretched himself out on the rug and read some more. His attention did not wander very far,  _ could _ not wander very far, for now he was deep into the witness statements and convictions and courtroom minutes, his eyes round as saucers as he took in the full extent of his butler’s history. Oh, he had expected evil, he had expected a criminal record, he had expected everything, but  _ this _ \- the reality -  _ this  _ was far more than he had ever bargained for. He turned hot, cold, hot again, sweating all the time, mopping his brow, rolling onto his front, his back, curling up on his side, in the foetal position, hiding beneath his desk, hunching over, unable to take it all in. Yet still, there was  _ more _ , more more more more more, and now he really couldn’t bear it and at last it was over and he lay facing the wall and shut his eyes and covered his ears and mouth and nose and -

He didn’t vomit, or cry. He shook a little, but perhaps he was just cold. It was nice under the desk, however, and soon his eyes closed and he began to doze, the warmth of the fire spreading through him. And this time, he didn’t entirely drop off, only half-slept, drifting in and out of Lethe, strange dreams haunting him. He imagined the scene of his butler’s crime, of his many crimes, picturing the flickering tongues of flame as they devoured the house, the stench of the smoke, as acrid as it had been on the day that his parents had died...and then the house was his own manor, gone up in flames, and as he watched the walls dissolved into cinders and a face floated before his own, a face that was just like his own - or maybe it  _ was _ his face...wide blue eyes so innocent and young, gleaming, pale cheeks as clean and fresh as funereal lilies, but now that face was stained with dirt and blood and the eyes were filled with tears, until finally they became blank and glazed and empty and more blood trickled from the corner of the tight lips, a mask of death. After that he ceased to recognise it as his own, and instead the chin lengthened, the cheeks lost weight and the hair grew lighter and lighter until it curled blonde around those kindly, drooping eyes, the eyes of his mother Rachel - but her eyes were her own no longer, now narrowing and mellowing into eyes the colour and shape of almonds, a black mole resting beneath a line of fine, dark lashes, hair the colour of coal-silk offsetting the handsome, delicate cheekbones. Their faces morphed and separated, the faces of his parents, becoming him and not him, uneasily alike and yet so separate from his own appearance that he couldn’t stand the distance, though it seemed intangible, indefinable.

Black lashes began to droop and those liquid eyes swept shut, blood overcoming each fragile visage, until suddenly it was not blood, it was hair, blood-red hair, the carmine colour of lycoris radiata - spider lilies - that blazes the earth...the pair of eyes opened and Ciel started back. No longer was the fire behind but inside them, and now they were filled with sorrow, a sharp, scarlet pain that seemed to fill up and brim over, so passive, so mournful and yet so vengeful. Red bangs curled around a sharp white chin, but instead of the usual vacant, reflective look that visage held, a creeping, evil countenance came over it, the like of which he had never seen before, spurred on by the fire that still raged and flamed within, flames which now formed the straight fringe and sharp bob, the mark of a spinster, the mark of an outcast, the outrageous, defiant modernity of Madam Red. It was as if Ciel’s eyes had been opened, a curtain drawn back, for now he couldn’t look away from the bitterness of that face and the twisted sorrow within. It was as if the white skin and crimson eyes turned to glass, through which the wounds of the heart and the machinations of the mind could be seen, one and all. 

_ Bloody, bold, resolute _ ...the words drifted through his head and the image of this Lady Macbeth, spurned, single, scorned, the most sadistic society gossip, seemed to eclipse the image of his aunt, so that it was a harpy, a harridan who replaced her, a red whore of Babylon that he couldn’t shake from his conscience. He clutched at his head and tried to shake himself awake but he was doing something wrong, he couldn’t escape, and then the face changed one more time and he froze in place. Those flickering, flaming eyes turned from false garnet to their true colour, a dirtier, earthier, more inconstant colour, the bright orange of incomplete combustion, marred by smuts of soot. Lashes lengthened, darkened, thickened, the bangs, too, extending, flickering, growing into tendrils of deepest night, shadow enclosing the whole face so its pallor lost all trace of health. From within that demonic mask, those topaz irises glowed, a furnace, an ever-raging blaze the like of which Ciel knew only too well. Now it was Sebastian’s seductive, bitter countenance that floated before him, but to Ciel’s shock there was nothing in that face that surprised him - it was an expression he had seen his servant wear often, the expression of recklessness, of aliveness, of complete insubordination, the hunger that seemed all-consuming. Sebastian was reaching out, caressing Ciel’s skin, his soul, reaching into him with hands of fire and twisting something so that Ciel felt a burning knot inside himself, a tangled cord that was wound ever tighter until he could almost stand it no more. Yet with every twist of the chord, delight filled him, reaching out from his core, release and relaxation claiming him and spreading to every extremity, surrender taking over. Instead of the  _ no _ he expected, an eternal, irresistible  _ yes _ rose up from beneath all that rubble, beneath the mountains of ash that his family had left behind, beneath all the numbness of old scars and the dirt of fresh ones, beneath the pain and repression and grime. Sebastian’s sharp-toothed smile widened, and Ciel couldn’t quite bear to think straight, to look at this thing head-on, for now he knew what he was, and this crime was one he’d heard of before, one he’d seen in the file, but now that it was happening to him somehow he was not scared, as if he knew it was a dream and surrendered to it. Sebastian’s expression was not smug, nor was it coy; his eyes blazed pure fury, or an intensity of emotion as potent, that same irrepressible power that he seemed to radiate after a fight. Now he claimed his prize and Ciel dissolved into the darkness of utter bliss, unable to find the end or the beginning of either of them, unable to distinguish between memory and imagination, real and fake. He didn’t want to, though - he didn’t want to care anymore, didn’t want to know. All there was was this, this feeling, the eternal, the end and the beginning, the divine, heinous, irredeemable euphoria of infinite and irresistible despair.

Ciel awoke with a start, slamming his head into the desk so that stars danced before his eyes. He stretched, his shoulders cramped, and tasted the disgusting dryness of his mouth, trying regain his senses. He remembered reading the file and lying on the floor and after that it was all a blur, though the memory of his dream floated fresh in his mind like lake-scum on the surface of water, too potent and too bright to be easily forgotten. It was then that he became aware of a certain discomfort in his groin and glanced down, his eyes widening as he groaned. There was something painful about it, and certainly distasteful - he couldn’t bear to look, didn’t want to think. Squeezing his eyes shut and reaching down, he slid his hand below the waistband of his trousers and into his shorts, finding himself to be unutterably hard.  _ Fuck. _ Not only that, but, as he now became aware, his briefs were slick with semen, so slick that he realised there might well be some actual cum in there too.  _ I came _ , he thought to himself, trying the words out in his mind. No, he couldn’t, he didn’t want to think about it. But in the dream...His eyes opened wide again and he made the mistake of accidentally looking down, his cheeks flooding with shame as he moaned. This feeling, this smell, this sight; why was it that he could tolerate it in dreams, even enjoy it, and yet wake up disgusted and cold?

Except he wasn’t cold - he was really rather warm, actually. Opening his eyes and glancing around furtively, he began to move his fingers up and down, hating himself, though not quite enough to stop. He used to be more ashamed of  _ this _ , but now he saw it as something unavoidable, a necessary bodily need; but this time, it was different. In fact, all of these  _ times _ in the past few months had been thoroughly different, and he knew exactly why, though he tried to feign ignorance. There was one face that floated in his mind’s eye, one voice that filled his ears with his own name, one hand that covered his own in his imaginings. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t shake it. And this -  _ now _ \- after all he knew - after what he had just read - to think of  _ him... _ he was vile, utterly despicable. Picking up his pace, he tried to get more of himself into his hand, his other hand now toying with the buttons of his waistcoat. It was impossible to do anything else, if he tried to put it off or ignore it it only got worse, he had to - he was coping.  _ No, I’m not _ , he thought, and the truth was an aphrodisiac, drawing out his panting and a soft, incredulous cry. He had never bargained or wished for such self-knowledge, but there it was. When he thought of the statements in that police report - oh, it was despicable, but - he couldn’t help imagining himself there, in that situation, and the blunt fury in those yellow eyes, and the dark hair hanging down, and  _ Sebastian, Sebastian, Sebastian, Sebasti--ah _ …

His fingers felt sticky. He withdrew them quietly, clenching his teeth, and wiped them clean with a handkerchief. They were shaking.  _ He  _ was shaking. He wiped the rest of himself down, too, taking his time. It gave him no pleasure, though the tingling warmth remained in his blood. He was sleepier than ever, his head none the clearer. At least Sebastian’s face was gone, now, and replaced in his mind by Madam Red’s. Ciel scrunched up his handkerchief and stuffed it deep into his pocket, buttoning himself stiffly. There was a slight damp patch on his trousers and his shorts were still wet, but they would probably dry off - he didn’t normally do this in his day-clothes. He didn’t normally fantasise about Sebastian without the cover of darkness to hide in, either, but it seemed extreme circumstances had pushed him to further indignities.  _ So be it. _ He knew what he needed to do now; he had a plan, of sorts, and the outcome all depended on Sebastian. Glancing up at the mantlepiece, he saw that it was already nearly five o’clock. He picked up the crumpled folder from the floor and climbed out from under the desk, stretching his cramped limbs as Sebastian - that damned butler - had taught him to do in his dance class. He wondered now whether the servant had taught him out of duty or pleasure; perhaps he had wanted to see what Ciel looked like when his clothes stretched taut over his body, with his cheeks flushed and sweaty.  _ Ah. _ This was what had changed, then - his knowledge of Sebastian and of his mind had not proved much more enlightening, except in this one respect, and goodness knows that hadn’t been his object in the first place. Or had it? He needed to examine his own motives better.  _ I won’t make the same mistakes twice. _ Reaching up to the button on the wall, he rang for the butler.

When Sebastian entered the room, he sensed instantly that something was different. It was stuffy in the study, though the fire was burning low, and he thought he picked up the faintest trace of - what was that? There was a musty scent that puzzled him, too familiar for him to dismiss, yet just a little too subtle to be sure.  _ Could he really...? _ Sebastian wondered, glancing at his master. He had been told to stay out of the room until dinner time and that was still more than an hour away, so why did the Earl want him now? His nostrils twitched, his eyes surreptitiously scanning the walls, the furniture, the carpets and ceiling. Their was something intoxicating about that scent, a fragrance so peculiar and enticing that he became deeply suspicious, the realisation dawning on him. The warmth rose within his body and he tried to remain focused on Ciel, but that did not help. After all, his master was sitting down, his lower half hidden beneath the desk, and Sebastian wondered what on earth he had been doing. There was no sign of mess, but he was sure...there was only one thing that scent could mean.  _ Did he plan it? _ the butler wondered, recalling his master’s order to stay away. The odour was still fresh, so he must have only just finished. Sebastian tensed the muscles in his fingers, trying not to clench them but trying, too, to prevent any other reaction in his own body. He normally had relatively good control, however today was turning out to be quite a strange one and. for one reason or another, he felt his veneer slipping.

Ciel seemed to sense this. Glancing up into those golden eyes, he broke off in the middle of what he had been saying, his throat drying up. His mouth hung open a little, unable to recollect what he had been thinking of as he took in the voracious, topaz stare that fixed him in place. Sebastian did not even seem conscious of the magnetism of that look, which made the Earl even angrier.  _ Look away _ , he wanted to order him, but that would be giving too much away, far too much.  _ Stop. I can’t bear the sight of you. Don’t go. Stay. Come back. Come. _ He blinked, still drowsy, trying to ignore the damp patch on his trousers that had yet to dry and thanking God for the table that stood between them. Clearing his throat, he began again, “Sebastian, prepare dinner early. I want it ready by six at the latest.”

The latter caught the words, coming out of his reverie, and frowned slightly, trying to work out his master’s intentions. Did he wish to leave the house tonight? It was unlike the Earl to grace the theatres with his patronage; in any case, they did not have tickets.  _ What, then? _ Furious, he bowed and replied, “Yes, my lord,” feeling as if he had missed an important piece of the puzzle. There was no time to investigate; he would be caught up in preparing the dinner for the next hour, as his master well knew.  _ Well-played. _ He gritted his teeth, clenching his fists at his sides once he was alone. He would whip the boy, he would find a way to punish him, though he didn’t know what for -  _ yet. _ Ciel was almost in his clutches, he would not escape now.  _ One last push, I think _ . Of course, he could have forced him, but there was no point forcing him when he had spent so long trying to rear him carefully, instilling in him the seeds of his destruction, a lamb to the slaughter. Besides, if he forced him the Earl would only retreat to that vacant, cold, unreachable place in his head, just as he had during his month underground, and then the butler’s victory would be no victory at all.  _ Better to wait until he talks himself into it _ , Sebastian thought, a sinister smile crossing his lips.

The hour until dinner passed uneventfully. By the time it arrived Ciel was positively bored, and less self-assured than he had been; in fact, he wasn’t sure about any of it. Should he really confront his butler? Was it really the right way to go about things? What did he even want, what did he expect? He banished the thoughts and doubts brutally, scanning the pages of the file once more, trying to hold in his head all that he had learned and concluded. There was a spot on the cardboard cover of the file that had not been there before and he scraped at it with his nail, finding it sticky and viscous. It took longer to get the substance off his finger once he realised what it was, and eventually he just sucked it off, his cheeks burning. He didn’t think Sebastian knew what he had done, but he couldn’t be sure - the man was devilishly omniscient at times, to such an extent that Ciel wondered if he did not spy on him. Then again, he hardly needed to; Ciel had let him into his house, invited him into his home, his bath, his bed, to watch him while he slept, to wash him when he woke, to feed him and dress him and drive him around like his doll.  _ This _ , this file, as well as the perverse thoughts in his head, were the only things he had against Sebastian, his only tools. He had hidden his thoughts from his butler, his deepest desires, and that made them a weapon, a last hope of resistance. But he could not use them, for if he tried to use his fantasies on his servant then he would sully himself irrevocably. 

He thought of what would happen, of how it would come about. His servant’s hands on his thighs, gloved fingers sliding over his bare chest, his nipples, cupping his neck and cheek, that sharp-toothed mouth around him, sucking him off. In spite of what everyone thought, Ciel was really quite knowledgeable. His father had a particular collection of literature in one corner of his library, and the Earl had stumbled across it with great interest and repulsion, reading it three times through. He cursed, feeling that warmth stir in his groin again, and slammed his fist down on the tabletop. The pain did not help, only provided a momentary respite from that spreading heat, the weakening wiles of pleasure that were almost inescapable, his greatest sin, his utmost vulnerability. In the end, he leapt to his feet, ran down three flights of stairs, wrapped himself in his greatcoat and stuffed the file down the front, marching out into the icy winter air to try and clear his head. The dead leaves whirled around him, scattered in insipid yellows and mummified browns, and he hugged himself, coming to rest on the edge of the fountain. It was dry at this time of year, the bowl empty but for some stagnant rainwater. He ran his fingers through the slime and took some pleasure in it, the puritanical pleasure of the disgusting, the inglorious, the self-denying. But that was the trouble - he was never truly self-denying, he always got what he wanted in the end, and what he wanted was always the most perverse, the most destructive. Even here, where the high winds whipped his cheeks and his ears quickly grew numb, he could not escape his thoughts. He had been told that exertion could settle the mind but did not believe it; with his delicate frame and health, he had never been encouraged to exercise, and so was highly suspicious of all the advice about activity. The best he could manage at the moment was trotting up and down amongst the shrubbery, waiting for his stiffness to go away, waiting for his mind to clear, waiting for his subconscious to return to its cage.

When he re-entered the house, Sebastian was waiting for him in the hall. He did not look surprised when he saw Ciel, only hastened to help him out of his coat. “You should not be out without a hat and scarf, my lord,” he scolded, as his master drew back. Sebastian paused.

“What’s it to you anyway?” the Earl demanded, almost accusatory. 

The butler’s eyes widened. “You will catch a cold, my lord,” he said simply, reaching again for the coat. Ciel held it firmly closed, his hands crossed tightly over his chest. Unable to account for this bizarre behaviour, Sebastian frowned, narrowing his eyes. His master stared boldly back, half-defensive, half-challenging, so Sebastian risked a question. “Is something wrong, sir?”

Ciel looked away, trying to turn aside. “I’ll come in a second,” he said, furtive. It was the wrong answer; the servant’s focus instantly sharpened, honing in on his master’s chest, that spot that the Earl seemed so adamant to protect. He stepped forward, now a little more insistent and imposing.

“Allow me to take your coat, sir,” he said, and Ciel stood his ground, holding himself even tighter. Sebastian reached out and, fast as lightning, the Earl slapped his hand away, turning his back. He could feel his servant’s eyes on him but he tried not to care, endeavoured to remain calm. He couldn’t let the butler find out.

Sebastian cleared his throat. “I should hope,” he began, “I should hope that after all we have been through together - after all I have seen of you...after all the times I have fought for you and protected you, my lord, and all the times you have been utterly defenceless before me, I should hope, then, that you trust me _. _ ” This time, he did not even bother with the titles, and Ciel clenched his fists. It was not like Sebastian to be so incoherent; but then again, it was not like him to be so honest, or to exert pressure on his master. His face hot, Ciel turned around, finding his butler much closer to him than before. Unwillingly, he looked up into his servant’s visage and found those golden eyes glaring at him, that face as pale and set as marble, the lines around the mouth unsmiling, the hot intensity of Sebastian’s fury palpable. It was this expression - the one that Ciel had longed for, the one he had dreamed about, the one that he had climaxed to - that pushed him over the edge again. Slowly, with dignity, though his face was pink, he unbuttoned his coat, handing it to Sebastian. The butler took it calmly, his eyes coming to rest on the file held in his master’s hands. He looked at it for a moment, blinked, then turned away, carrying the overcoat into the cloakroom.

Ciel let out a long breath that he knew his servant must have heard. He didn’t care - the cat was out of the bag now. His panic and tumult were great, but so, too, were his relief and excitement; the moment of reckoning had come. When Sebastian returned, he followed him upstairs in silence, entering the dining room and taking his seat. Dropping the folder next to his plate, he tucked in his chair and took a sip from his wine glass, his mouth dry. The butler served him in silence, only saying the names of the dishes as he presented them, dishes lovingly and carefully prepared that Ciel picked at, hardly hungry, and then pushed away from him. In this way, they progressed through the meal, the little lord drinking more than was his wont, the servant watching, watching everything, his stare penetrating the boy but not that infuriating, mystifying cardboard file that his master had fought so hard to protect. The penny dropped towards the end of the meal, while the Earl was eating his dessert, and as Sebastian observed how Ciel’s tongue made its slow progress round his spoon, he suddenly realised what had happened. Abberline, the police archives, Ciel’s search of his room...every nerve in his body jangled in alarm. It was too late to do anything now - what was done was done - all he could do was respond. Suddenly, his master held all the cards and he had none.  _ But that can be a disadvantage, depending on the game _ , he reminded himself, automatically taking away the Earl’s bowl and cutlery.  _ I can turn this situation around. _

Ciel got to his feet and pushed back his chair, picking up the folder. “Come with me,” he said, and Sebastian had no choice but to follow him to the library. There was a fire burning in the grate when they got there, as always, and Ciel began to pace up and down, his butler standing before him. Sebastian was only slightly taller than him, but those two inches counted - he couldn’t do it like this, not with him standing up, so he said, “Sit down,” pointing to a chair. His butler sat down, and Ciel was reminded of when they had written the letter to Druitt and why he had disliked this positioning then. It was too late now; he had to go forward with this. Pacing agitatedly, his fingers worked at the edges of the pages, thumbing them and creasing them as he turned sharply on his heel, unable to settle until he came to an abrupt, silent halt. He could not look at Sebastian, so he chucked the file in his direction, and began, “When I was at the police station the other day, I found something.”

His butler watched him with a measured look, hardly glancing down at the file. He would not show any desperation - he did not need to. Disconcerted, Ciel glanced at him quickly, then looked away, the colour in his cheeks high, the room a little too warm.

“Abberline told me I should look at your criminal record. I was curious, so I found the right year and the folder, and - and I...”

“Stole it?” Sebastian volunteered, his tone flat. 

The Earl clenched his teeth so hard they ached, his fists too. Glaring at his butler, he went on, “ _ Borrowed _ it. For personal reasons. I was interested.” He drew in a long breath and expelled it quickly, still pacing. He looked at Sebastian again to gauge his reaction, and finally his footsteps petered out. Somehow, he managed to face his butler head on. His tone solemn, his voice shaking slightly, his eyes fixed on his servant’s, he said, “I read it. All of it.”

Sebastian watched his master coolly. Evidently, his input was required. He wasn’t sure what reaction the boy expected, what he wanted, but he remained seated, his feet apart, leaning on his knees, and spoke only one word. “And?”

Of all the answers he could have received, this was probably the worst. Ciel struggled to comprehend Sebastian’s nonchalance. “ _ And?! _ I know everything now - I know what you did, and by God -”

“You’re disgusted?” Sebastian’s words were almost toneless, weary. “Dismayed? Horrified? Shocked? My lord, that file contains nothing you didn’t already know. There is nothing that the police have on me that you have not suspected, nor I hinted at.” Ciel was shaking, worked up to a frenzy, his face small and his fists clenched. Sebastian leaned forward, looking intently into his master’s eyes. “If you cared,” he began softly, “you would never have asked me for my help in the first place. On that day, underground, beneath the cathedral, when you saw me, a member of a criminal gang, and watched as I stood by and let you be molested - did you really think that I was a good man? I thought you had grown out of such childish fallacies. I have done terrible things, yes, and continue to do so in your service. We are no better than each other, my lord; just because you give the orders, does not mean that you are not as culpable as I am for the crimes you would have me commit.” He got to his feet, dusting the creases from his trousers and standing face to face with his master. There was a long, empty silence. Ciel looked lost, so his servant gave him a helpful nudge in the right direction.

“Now, my lord.” Ciel blinked, his eyes snapping back into focus. Sebastian’s flickering gaze held him, mesmerised, that warm, dark baritone irresistible. “I am not the killer you have been seeking. You did not set out to catch me - you are going to catch Jack the Ripper. And I think we both know exactly who that is, and where to find her.”

The Earl made a weak attempt to resist, shaking his head slightly. “No…” he said, “I -” But there was no going back. There was no hiding from the truth. Finally, he said, “I just don’t understand why?”

Sebastian levelled him with a stare. “That is what we are going to find out, my lord,” he replied, and reached inside his jacket. Ciel’s eyes widened as his servant withdrew another brown paper folder.

“What is that? A criminal record?”

Sebastian shook his head. “No,” he replied, opening it up. “But it is a document that proves Madam Red’s guilt.” He withdrew the page on which the names of the victims were listed, showing it to Ciel. “They’re all here, sir.”

Unable to believe his eyes, Ciel read down the list.  _ Mary Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes _ ...Each one was neatly recorded, in order, plain as day. He checked the cover of the file and sure enough, it bore the name  _ ‘Dr Angelina Dalles.’ _ He checked again, scanning the page, and saw that it was a record of operations, with the names and addresses listed. All of the women were down as having their appendices removed, no more than a routine operation. 

He frowned. “But I don’t understand - why would she care? What’s her motive?”

Sebastian shrugged. “Let’s ask her ourselves,” he replied, his eyes gleaming. 

Ciel raised his gaze from the page, wary. “You mean...the last name?” 

Sebastian nodded. “Tonight, we will catch her in the act,” he said, and Ciel’s eyes widened. “I am sure that whatever service Madam Red provided these women, it was more than a mere appendectomy.” They exchanged one last, intense glance, then Sebastian said, “I will prepare the carriage. Perhaps you might take the precaution of bringing a gun, young master.”

Ciel nodded, his mind reeling. Once more that image of Madam Red’s face, twisted with rage, entered his thoughts, and then Sebastian’s, and he shuddered, unable to comprehend how it had come to this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was...long and tasty. I'm now officially studying again (panic!), so I'll move updates to the weekend. We're almost there - only three chapters left. Get ready for the denouement. I've loved this journey and boy has it been a long one; I look forward to the dramatic end.


	18. At Midnight: That Butler, In Action

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ciel and Sebastian set out to catch Jack the Ripper once and for all. Against all of Ciel's hopes, they capture the very woman he had hoped to exonerate - but her story proves to be more complex and twisted than he could ever have imagined, and leaves the Earl in the deepest dilemma of his life. (CW: graphic violence)

It felt like déjà vu, to be back in the carriage early in the evening, hurtling towards Whitechapel to catch Jack the Ripper. Only this time, Ciel had concrete evidence that they really were pursuing a murderer, and yet he had never felt more torn. His own aunt, a violent serial killer? A war was being waged in his heart between belief and disbelief, but he knew it was futile. Even if he knocked on the carriage roof, Sebastian would not turn back - he was convinced that Madam Red was the culprit, and since he was the one who had done the real investigating Ciel had to trust him. It crossed his mind that Sebastian might have fabricated the evidence, but then why would he be taking his master to the East End? If he really wanted to eliminate Madam Red, who was, after all, one of Ciel’s last remaining guardians, it wouldn’t make sense for him to have the Earl try and catch her in the act. It could only be that he really believed she was the murderer, and, to his horror, Ciel found himself beginning to believe it too.

Tonight the darkness closed in quicker. The rain had yet to abate and black clouds rolled in across the sky, so that, together with the heavy smog, it was impossible to see a thing. Ciel felt every bump and jolt in the road, his head spinning, the recent past and near future circling round and round in his mind. He had thought that, by reading Sebastian’s file, he would get one over on him, but his butler had been as cool under fire as ever and, for a moment, Ciel had believed the very worst: that he simply didn’t care. But then that blazing, unsmiling, blank, blunt expression had spoken for itself, and it was a measure of how well he knew his butler that he had recognised the white-hot anger, a measure of how little effect the file had had on them both that he did not fear it nearly enough. Or maybe he did, he wasn’t sure - in fact he was fearful, he feared it above all, but that fear was irreparably tainted with excitement, a terrible, heart-stopping, stomach-stirring excitement that seemed to be driving him mad. When he had sat under his desk and slipped his hand into his shorts, when he had slept with that pale mask floating before his eyes, when he had breathed in the scent of everything in Sebastian’s room in the vain hope of closeness; he could hardly hide from it anymore. Whether it was agape, eros, philia, philautia, storge, pragma, ludus or mania he could not tell, but he was so deeply infatuated - _beyond_ infatuated - that it was impossible to extricate himself now. Had he set this trap for himself? Or had it always been there, woven into their contract, since the day he had survived the scourge?

They drew up in a squalid alleyway that Ciel did not recognise, Sebastian backing the carriage into a blind corner where not even the rats scurried. There were no gas-lamps here, nothing save the overwhelming stench of human waste to testify that this was the land of the living. The butler got down from the box, quieting the horses, and climbed up onto the coach step. Ciel felt a strong urge to bar the door, but then it was too late and Sebastian was inside. His servant had to stoop to enter, then he was crouching in the darkness, far too close to his master.

“What are you doing?” Ciel asked, his voice smaller than it should have been.

Sebastian reached under his legs and under the seat, saying shortly, “Our disguises.”

Ciel’s throat seized up. “Aren’t you going to wait outside?” he asked, but felt the shake of that shaggy, dark head before he saw it.

“No time,” the butler replied, already slipping off his jacket. Ciel’s fists clenched and he backed up against the wall of the carriage, his heart hammering. Sebastian seemed to notice this, and perhaps, too, he remembered their recent conversation, the file, and all of Ciel’s history, for he added, “You may turn your back if it bothers you.” The Earl’s face and chest felt hot. He did not reply, could not reply. Closing his eyes, he pressed his face into the curtains, unable to breathe in the stuffy carriage air with his servant so close. His eyes prickled as he listened to the sound of clothes being shed, a mixture of shame, terror and desire overwhelming him so that he didn’t know if he wanted to scream, laugh or sob. He crossed his legs tightly, but that only made matters worse. Shifting position, he caught sight of a dim reflection in the carriage window, the white flash of planes and planes of skin, and his eyes widened, glued to the spectral vision. As he was staring Sebastian seemed to glance up, and for a moment, their eyes met in the glass. Ciel wasn’t sure if his butler was really looking at him, but it seemed like it. For a long second, their stare held, Sebastian still mechanically pulling on a new shirt, new trousers, his eyes searing into Ciel’s, and it seemed like the blood was boiling in his chest, for the Earl could not but feel he was choking on something scalding and inevitable, the truth forced down him by those golden eyes. Then his servant had to glance down to tie his shoelaces, and Ciel rested his forehead against the cool window, closing his eyes, unable to dispel that all-too-familiar ache.

“You may turn around now, young master - it is quite safe.” Sebastian’s voice was soft and sardonic, that infuriating lilt undisguised. Slowly, Ciel shifted in his seat, praying that his butler would leave him alone. It seemed Sebastian had no such intention, however; he pulled the Earl towards him and began to undo his jacket, adding superfluously, “Pardon me, we are in a hurry.” Ciel gritted his teeth, unable to object but despairing of his own helplessness. The butler was on his knees, his master stooping, and if he moved his head ever-so-slightly - if he even so much as blinked once and looked straight ahead - he would see the damning evidence of Ciel's shame. There was no way around it; all Ciel could do was try and be as docile as possible in the hopes that his servant would remain focused on the task and not remember his mischief. At first, this strategy seemed to work, as Sebastian had to shuffle aside to remove his jacket and only worked on Ciel’s top half, but his hands seemed to linger a little too long on the boy’s bare chest and the Earl could not help the extra surge of blood. Was his butler doing things intentionally? Since reading that file, he was even less sure of the man's motives. It had not helped him - in fact, it was a positive hindrance, since it put everything Ciel had believed into suspicion. He pressed his eyes tight shut as a shirt was pulled over his head, knowing what came next.

Those gloved fingers were feather-light as they undid the buttons of his trousers. He actually  _ ached _ under his butler’s touch, so much so that it was all he could do not to fall to his knees or grab that hand or wind his own fingers into the black hair on that head, so dangerously close. Sebastian slid his trousers down perfunctorily, saying nothing, and Ciel stepped out of them, risking a glance at his servant. When he did, he saw that those burning eyes were travelling all the way up his body to meet his own, contemplative, alive, alight. In a voice so soft Ciel could have imagined it, Sebastian murmured, “We’ll deal with this later,” his lips curling upwards. Then his gaze was gone and he was silent once more, and it could have been a daydream, the Earl could have been wrong, except for the deliberate way in which the butler had looked into his eyes, that insolent, shameless gaze. His hips bucked slightly as Sebastian undid his suspenders, handling his calves and thighs so gently, so lightly, caressing them almost without touching them, and the butler observed that movement with the same inimitable smile, leaning in just a bit too close. Then the other trousers and socks were on, the white-gloved fingers expertly buttoning up the already too-tight disguise over his straining hardness, straightening out the creases at his knees, his ankles, even the ones around his behind so that Ciel jumped. He couldn’t tell if he was recoiling or leaning in, he couldn’t understand the impulses of his body after spending so long trying to suppress them. Perhaps it was both - as ever, everything around him and his butler seemed formed of perfect paradox, so hypocritical and fickle that he could not bear to confront it directly.

Getting to his feet, Sebastian settled a floppy cap on Ciel’s head with a heavy, patronising hand. “Let’s go.” Thoroughly humiliated, his master trotted after him, his hand closing around the cold pistol in his pocket. They edged along the gutter, leaning back against the grimy bricks of the blind walls of warehouses, the echoes of their footsteps covered by the soughing of the wind and the gurgling of water in the nearby drains, which were already overflowing with filth. As they turned the corner into the next street, Sebastian motioned for stillness, so Ciel crept on quietly, the frigid night air and moisture dripping down the back of his shirt helping to calm his feverish mind, though his adrenaline was high. They stepped into the adjacent cul-de-sac and came to a halt, staring at the house at the end. The whole street was dark, except for a single window in a single tenement opposite them, no more than a hundred yards off, one lighted window in front of which a shadow moved. Exchanging a glance, they nodded to each other and darted out along the uneven road, running towards the door of the house. There was a back staircase that led up to the first floor and their steps rattled on it, the image of Annie Chapman’s flickering oil lamp still fresh in Ciel’s mind, the rain hardly covering the noise they made. Finally they were there and Ciel’s hand was on the door-handle and he flung it wide, stepping into the room, and -

Something hot splashed his face and ran down his chin. The golden light blazed too bright, marred with the deeper colours of fire, a gory tableau burned into his retinas. He couldn’t look away though it hurt to remain, an abstract image of blood seeming to flood his mind. Then a hand clapped in front of his eyes, a warm, opaque darkness obscuring everything, and his butler was holding him still and closing the door, his palm warm on his master’s eyelids. Ciel did not hurry to remove that hand, only lifting it slowly after a few minutes, his face set. He wanted to open the door again but he knew that he could not, that as long as that door remained closed he would not have to think or believe that what he had seen was real, possible. His stomach churned violently and he bolted down the stairs and over to the nearest drain, falling to his knees and retching. A torrent of rainwater poured from the broken gutter and washed his supper down the drain, the cascade swirling away from him. The bile scorched his throat, but he felt better once he had nothing more to bring up, and got to his feet to find Sebastian at his side. His butler was watching him attentively and reached out an arm to help him, but Ciel refused it with a shake of his head, turning towards the door. He could not deny what he had seen - he  _ would _ not deny it - he reached for the gun in his pocket and checked that it was properly loaded, then pulled the hammer back. The door-handle turned and light streamed out, running down the steps like blood.

The murderer descended the stairs slowly, looking intently and coldly at the pair of intruders. Ciel let out a long breath, staring back at her, and said, banishing all regret from his voice, “Madam Red.”

She turned to him, one hand held behind her back, her scarlet eyes flashing. There were darker splots of crimson and brown all over her coat, staining her clothes, the white of her undershirt. Glaring at him, she asked, “How did you know my name?”

Ciel could have laughed, though it wasn’t funny. “Don’t you recognise your own nephew?” he asked, a note of false disappointment in his voice. Her eyes widened and she gripped whatever it was she had behind her back even tighter, so that he saw the muscles of her slender arms tense, her expression white, then tight and pained.

“Ciel,” she sighed. “Of course it would have to be you.” Tucking whatever she was holding into her belt, she put both hands in front of her and carefully stripped off a soiled pair of gloves, chucking them into the gutter. “One must be sanitary,” she called out, the light of amusement dancing over her vacant face. “We always insist on being sanitary, even when doing things by the backdoor.”

“We?” His attention was hawk-like, fixing her in place.

Madam Red was unfazed, as cool as he had ever seen her. “The society I work for,” she replied amiably. “A women’s liberation group. We work for the betterment of our sex, and for equal rights. I’ve done many a service by them - you see, they’re greatly in need of doctors.” The corner of her mouth quirked up. “If they could see me now…”

Ciel frowned. “A cult?”

His aunt blinked at him, then threw back her head and laughed, her hair darkening in the rain and sticking in strands to her forehead. “Oh, dear me, no,” she answered him, chuckling. “They’d hate that. No, we simply provide certain  _ services _ for women in need. I specialise.” She shook her head and looked as if she might move off again, her voice turning nasty. “Anyhow, you can’t prove anything. Caught red-handed, I know, but really - you’ve no evidence, and who would believe you? I’m one of the most powerful aristocrats in London. Accusing your own kin without proof; that’s a dirty trick.” Her gaze fixed on Ciel, she took a step closer, and Sebastian spoke up.

“You’re wrong.” Madam Red, who had hitherto paid him no attention, now whipped round, straightening up and smoothing down the damp folds of her coat. He approached her, a small warning, and drew something out of the breast of his jacket. It was the cardboard folder from the Royal London Hospital, and the murderess stared blankly at it, uncomprehending, so Sebastian began to read. “Record of operations for winter 1886. Mary Nichols, Spitalfields, appendectomy. Annie Chapman, Whitechapel and Spitalfields, appendectomy. Spring 1887. Elizabeth Stride, Whitechapel, appendectomy. Catherine Edd-”

“Alright!” Madam Red clenched her fists, her face white, and reached behind her slowly. “Alright, I understand, you’ve got me. A shame - if you’d left well alone, you'd be alright. But not alright.” She drew in a deep, ragged breath, concealing her hands in the folds of her skirt, and Sebastian’s eyes widened. “Never alright.” Her gaze switched to Ciel and she glared at him, a world of pain in her bloody eyes. “How could I be, with you in the world?” He frowned, and she took to her heels, fast as lightning, darting towards him. “You worthless boy, you aberration!” She raised high the knife in her hand, still wet with the blood of Mary Kelly, and cried, “ _ You should never have been born! _ ”

Sebastian swept in behind her and raised his fist and Ciel ducked, yelling, “Sebastian, NO!” Mystified, the butler had no choice but to drop his arm, his eyes flashing as he skidded to a halt. The Earl backed away, but his aunt had frozen, her blade aloft. She trembled, her hands shaking, her eyes darkening, and then she dropped the knife and crumpled at his feet. Her damp head bowed, her wet hair falling into her eyes, her sodden coat clutched tight about her, her expensive dress stained with filth. Her shoulders were shaking, and when Ciel realised she was sobbing his eyes widened and he stood, transfixed, oblivious to all else, oblivious to Sebastian glaring at him, unable to tear his gaze away from the supplicant at his boots.

When Madam Red spoke, her voice was choked. “I can’t do it,” she muttered, clutching at her sides. Ciel felt a horrible stir of recognition, listening to her voice that was so similar to his own, and seeing that gesture of hers that he knew too well, the gesture of a lost soul clinging to reality. “I- I c-can’t do it, no!” Her voice rose and then descended into incoherency, but she wiped her mouth and knelt up a little, her head still bowed. Ciel’s hand tightened on the pistol in his pocket, and he lifted it out and held it within her line of sight. “I thought if I erased you - if I erased them all, and painted them b-beautiful red - I’d be free. It’d be over.” Wiping her eyes, she sighed into her fingers. “Alright, then. Alright. You want to know the truth?” She glared angrily at him from between her fingers. “The truth of your godforsaken family? They cheated me, every one of them. Liars and cheats!” Her voice was loud and raw but strong, too, and she flung her head back and laughed until she coughed, spluttering up rainwater. Ciel regarded her coldly.

“What right have you to sully my name?” he asked icily, but perhaps his voice was just brittle enough, for it did the trick. 

She reached up to him, her eyes wide, and shook her head. “You don’t know,” she breathed, rapturous, sincere. “Your father was the best man in the world. I still remember the day he came to us - the first time he visited the house, and oh...I was overjoyed. Rachel, I, we never saw men, let alone strangers. We didn’t go to balls, she was fragile, I was ashamed - ashamed of my hair. It was too red, too much. I don’t know,” she trailed off, shaking her head and glancing aside. “We were a Catholic family. They thought I was marked by the devil.

“But that day - the day Vincent came - everything changed.” She sighed, her heart expanding, and raised her face to the sky, seeing his visage before her. “He wanted to speak to me, he asked about my shyness, so I admitted - I’d never admitted, but I did now - I told him how I hated my hair, my colours. His family were German, they were protestants, he didn’t believe in omens. He told me -” she broke off, smiling beatifically, trying to recall his words - “he said my hair was the colour of spider lilies. I’d never seen them before, but he said he’d show me some. And next time he came, he did; he brought an entire bunch of them.  _ Lycoris radiata, the colour that blazes the earth. _ That’s what he said. I’d never seen such vibrant petals. He told me I was like them, that my hair curled around me like - like the stamens, or petals, or tendrils, I don’t remember.” Her eyes shone, her countenance transfigured, her gaze swirling crimson. For a second, she faltered, but then she regained her bliss. “He embraced me. I’ll never forget it - his arms around me, so strong, stroking my hair, on my waist. He said he’d give me one kiss on my l-lily lips. Just one. Of course I didn’t believe that that could be all, but - but he’d made his intentions clear, I -” Her eyes darkened, her hands clenching at her sides - “I should have known. I should have known.

“Rachel and he were engaged.” She glanced up at Ciel with a bitter expression, surveying his face, then dropping her gaze again. “I stopped wearing red, I cut my hair, I left for medical school after they married, against my parents' wishes.” Chuckling ruefully, she added, “It was the best thing I’d done. It  _ should _ have been the best thing I’d ever done. As things stood, my heart was Vincent’s, had been ever since that kiss. So, I - well, I did the only thing I could. I dressed up, I went to balls, I told stories. And eventually, I hooked a man forgiving enough to allow for my broken heart. I could tell him anything, and though I never loved him like Vincent, I - he liked, accepted me, as a friend.” She turned her face away, looking into the shadows. “And sometimes, in the heat of...passion...I thought of him.  _ Him. _ I thought of your father, and that consoled me as much as it hurt.”

Ciel frowned, trying to process it all. He had never realised his aunt had been married - she had been a spinster as long as he’d known her. He opened his mouth to say something, but was glad in a second when she cut him off. “We were happy, for a time,” she said, nodding, staring fixedly at the adjacent wall. “I was the happiest I’d been. I finally became pregnant, which was a god-send, and then all my thoughts were of the baby. Rachel had one of her own but I thought I could outshine her, I thought I could at least equal her in happiness. I don’t know if I really wanted a child, but in competition with her it was the perfect move. Everything was within reach - I had all but won, or at least, I was even with her.” She sighed bitterly, hissing through her teeth.

“Then came the accident. I was almost half-way to full term, we were in the carriage, I was on the way to Rachel's. I decided it was time to tell her I was pregnant. I knew I had to do it, to get full satisfaction, and for her sake, too, for...she never hurt me, never did anything to me.” Madam Red’s voice became thick again and she waited for some minutes before clearing her throat. “We were driving fast. It was spring. There was a sudden shower, and - I think - the other carriage...there must have been another carriage, I'm sure of it! I can hardly remember. I don’t remember.” She let out a long breath, watching it condense in the cold night air, her face raised, her eyes distant. “The next thing I knew, I was in hospital and the doctor was beside me. I’d been in a coma, apparently - to save my life, they’d cut out my womb. My child was dead. A haemorrhaging, they said; my husband was dead, no other survivors, they said. I thought of the carriage, and I could not - could  _ not _ \- believe that it would have...broken. Of all things, that carriage - a carriage so sturdy, so perfect - I couldn’t help fixating. I slept again for many days, refusing to eat, not leaving bed, and I realised that I had been going to the manor when it had happened. The accident. It was because of the Phantomhive curse. I knew then what the curse meant; I resolved to cut ties with Rachel. It was the right thing to do.

“I convalesced for a year or so, my muscles still healing. Open surgery, you know...After that, I did not hear of or see my sister for months, nearly years. She wrote to me, but I - I thrust her letters into the fire, until -” her eyes filled with tears, her voice cracking - “until I simply  _ couldn’t _ . Oh, I had to hear of  _ him _ , I had to know! With my husband gone things only got worse, I couldn’t let him go, I could never let him go!” She clenched her fists on her knees, shaking. “Vincent invited me. I was so scared of going, I asked them to come to me, but they said they couldn’t because - because...that was the first time I knew of you.” She looked up, her eyes fixed on Ciel’s, and he started under the lucidity of that gaze. Now she was smiling fondly, sweetly, but her eyes seemed to look past him, seeing another boy.

“I came to the manor. They moved me there, saying it was no trouble. How could I tell either of them what the trouble really was? For all I knew, your father had forgotten that kiss, forgotten everything, and I could not stir things up now. And when I arrived, I saw the vast gardens and the sun shining down, and you, playing in my sister’s lap, and I thought - I thought -  _ how could I possibly hurt anyone here? How could I disrupt this peace, this...perfection? _ Oh, I wanted to belong so badly, you don’t know how much it hurt! I wanted to be perfect too, but I - I couldn’t, I was tainted by everything, by tragedy! I forgot the Phantomhive curse, I banished it from my mind; I thought such peace was utterly infallible. I did not know much of the aristocrats of evil, I was not part of that circle, I couldn’t know what Vincent was doing. Even now, it’s shrouded in so much mystery.” Her tone became bitter, and she looked accusingly at Ciel. “No one would ever let me in.

“I recovered from my illness, and my grief, by degrees. You helped - Rachel was weak, weaker than I had imagined, so I spent a lot of time with you. Vincent kept away from the house, though he loved to see you, and I always wondered if that was my fault. So, in the end, I - I pulled myself together and returned to London, taking a house, hiring servants, becoming independent once more. And I was good at it, too - I threw myself into independence with my whole heart, I began to care, to see the ills of the world around me. I thought how unjust it was that women had to suffer because of - because of their reproductive organs...I knew the pain of losing one’s rights over one’s body, so behind the facade of endless socialising I became part of a women’s group, advocating equal rights. Eventually, when I had been there for some time, I was approached by the founder.” She twisted her hands in her lap, looking down. “She asked me to help her provide a... _ special _ service. It was for women who didn’t want to have babies - women impregnated against their will, or simply duped by men who would not support them. She asked me to take on some patients, since I was a doctor, and find a way to provide my services freely and discreetly without the hospital’s knowledge.

“I did as I was told. I only wanted to help. I don’t know what I wanted. A part of me was shocked, but I submitted and began visiting patients, unfortunate women. They needed my help, it was empowering, perhaps - too much so. I came to depend on that power - power over life and death - to obsess over it, even. I had sheared off my Catholic roots years ago, at your father’s behest, but now they seemed to return, telling me all the time that I was damned, that something would happen. I performed the abortions regardless, and a few hysterectomies too. It became a fine art; the blood, the precision...I liked it. I visited the manor less and less, only appearing for Christmas or Easter, but that was worse, for then I saw your little face and thought of what I had done, and had to follow my sister into the chapel that Vincent had built specially for her, my conscience marred, unable to confess. Once again I felt tainted, out of place, this perfect place - I became embittered. That was why, when Christmas came around - your eleventh birthday - I did not arrive until it was too late.” She dropped her gaze, her lashes sweeping low, shielding her ruby eyes from Ciel’s fixed look.

“On that day...the smoke was visible from miles away. It was dark, but even so - I hardly suspected - and then when I got down, the whole thing...the whole place was ablaze, and it was red, so red, painted red, and I - I - I thought - I couldn’t help - I knew that in some way, I had done this, with my red hair, with my sins, with my secrets! I had sullied that - life forever, - beauty - and now, and now - that life, Vincent -  _ Vincent - _ ” 

She was overcome by a storm of weeping, hiccoughing and groaning, tears pouring down her cheeks so that she had to break off. It was a long time before she became coherent again. “I returned to London and did not leave the house for months. And when the funeral came, I stood there and stared at that - that  _ block _ of stone, separating me and my love, and I felt only - anger.  _ So much  _ anger. Rachel, my sister, the angel, the righteous... _ she _ had died with the man she loved, the man  _ I  _ loved, while I had been left behind, the perfect family would always be together, the beloved family -- I was cast out more than ever, and he - he  _ left _ me, he chose  _ her _ , forever!  _ Forever! _ ” She gasped, her breath rasping and uneven, and dragged her nails through her skirts. Taking a deep inhale, she tried to calm herself, rubbing the tears off her cheeks, raking her fingers through her hair, but it was no good. Looking up at Ciel with furious eyes, she continued, raving, “You returned; when I heard you were alive, I couldn’t believe it; I had to see for myself, and I should have been overjoyed, and I was, because  _ something, anything _ of this family, beauty, the family, my  _ love _ had survived, but -” She let out a long moan, closing her eyes, shaking her head. “You were not  _ him _ ,” she whispered, her throat dry. “You were -  _ so much  _ of  _ her _ , so much both of them, but not - not  _ him,  _ never  _ him. _ ” Her eyes opened, now frighteningly blank, dulled by hopelessness. When she spoke, she was incoherent with despair. “I didn’t want you,” she said, and Ciel caught his breath. “You didn’t deserve to be alive, not if he died. But unlike him, unlike my sister, you never smiled. You didn’t call me Aunt Ann, you - you never - I could hardly believe you were Ciel, you’re not Ciel! You're not him! You’re wrong!”

She drew in another deep breath, exhausted, crying weakly. “I had to get back at you, at  _ them _ , somehow, but I didn’t know how, I was - a-angry. I tried to live normally but society life suffocated me, I hated it, it was my nightmare. I made things worse - I continued my work with the society, trying to free women, punishing myself.” She shook her head, massaging the crease between her brows with the heel of her hand. “Their ingratitude...grated on me. These sluts, these  _ whores _ who came to me with frightened eyes, like stupid deer, and unwanted children - all these dead babies - so many dead babies - who were they to tell me what to do, who were they to decide who lived and died? I became obsessed with my sin, my Catholic fear would not leave me, I remembered  _ every detail _ of Hell and knew  _ exactly _ where I would be, and I- I  _ had _ to do penance. I  _ must. _ Understand, please, you  _ must _ \- you  _ must  _ -” She twisted her hands in her skirt, hiccuping, sobbing, crying, and began to sing. “ _ Lycoris radiata, the flower that blazes the earth _ \- I make them beautiful, angelic, I paint them in the red I had despised, the holy red, the red he loved. I took their sin from them as it had been taken from me and I sent them to be with  _ him _ , with God, the angel, Vincent, God, knowing that if I damned enough sinners I might just save myself. In his eyes, perhaps. The rules of the Underworld, the only world he cared about, his only bride - the corpses, the blood - I- I have done terrible things, but - try, you  _ must _ ,  _ understand _ , Ciel.” Her lower lip trembled and the tears began coursing down her cheeks once more. “Oh, Ciel,  _ Ciel, _ Vincent, please, please don’t, I only, I didn’t, please,  _ please,  _ Vincent,  _ please _ ! I love you, I love you Vincent, why won’t you, choose me, save me, save me, I need - I - I -  _ Vincent, Vincent _ , I- I-” Collapsing in a heap, she flung her arms around Ciel’s knees, clinging to his legs, stroking them, caressing them, sobbing, sighing, moaning, grovelling at his feet, staring up into his face. He realised that she thought he was his father. He watched her dumbly, listening as she became utterly incoherent, her tears and snot soiling his clothes, her wet, shapeless lips smothering him in kisses. She was pitiful, really. He thought of all the unfortunate souls like her - Druitt and his mother, himself - their fragile, delicate minds - and wondered if he should take her home with him. They’d look after her; the servants could care for her. She’d stay at his house, or perhaps an asylum, and they would care for her there, too. Would that be kinder?

It might be, but it would also be an insult to the family name. She  _ had _ sullied it, it was true. He knew that to give her up would be to see her swing. Better to kill her now, put her down like a dog. His hands stopped shaking as he raised his pistol and pointed its muzzle at her head. Just to make sure, he rested the barrel on her skull, pointing straight down. He would not miss; she would be dead in seconds. Was it the right thing to do? He didn’t know, but it was the only thing he could do. She might twitch, but she’d be dead as dead could be.

He squeezed the trigger and fired four shots into her head.

Madam Red slumped to the ground, blood pouring from gash where her skull had been, darkening what remained of her hair. Ciel dropped the gun, staggered, and Sebastian caught him, reaching out to support him, but the Earl did not want to be touched, he slapped his servant away. For a moment, Sebastian stared at him, then Ciel stumbled a little to the other side and righted himself, picking up and pocketing his gun. “Come on,” he said to his butler, turning away. He thought for a second, the rain sliding down his face, unsure of whether he could trust his own voice. Then he swallowed. “We’ll give her to Undertaker.”

The butler nodded. Sliding off his coat, he wrapped it around the body and hoisted her into his arms. They walked in silence back to the coach, and Sebastian deposited the corpse on the back seat, so that Ciel climbed up on the box beside him instead. He huddled against him wordlessly, almost resisting leaning into that warmth. Once again, the butler glanced down in surprise, then smiled slightly. Ciel was not thinking, which was good. He waited dumbly while his servant took away the body, entered the dark shop, and left it with the cackling, grey-haired man who lurked in the dark. That made him shiver. Then Sebastian jumped up beside him, and Ciel couldn’t help cleaving to that bright heat. His butler let him, pressing their legs together from thigh to knee for the remainder of the journey, staring straight ahead with a burning light in his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update - I am very much back to school, so my time is limited. I've loved this journey so much, and I can't express how grateful I am for your support and kudos and wonderful comments. Coming some time next week: the smut (at last)...


	19. Later That Night: That Butler, Seducing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shaken by the death of his aunt, confused by the outcome of the Jack the Ripper case, exhausted after days without proper sleep, Ciel cracks. But while his anger is enough to sustain him for a time, soon he is unable to resist the prospect of escape into Sebastian's arms and the dark fantasy that has dogged him for so many years...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: very much dubcon, and sex, obviously. Enjoy...

When they arrived back at the mansion Ciel leapt from the box as if burned, and, though he waited for Sebastian to unlock the front door, darted inside as soon as possible, leaving his servant standing out in the cold. The butler huffed slightly, his breath a cloud of silver in the chill night air, then climbed back up on the box and brought the carriage round to the coachhouse where he stabled the horses carefully, rubbing them down with straw, and checked the coach wheels, the shafts, the paintwork. He felt somewhat torn between an unhurried slowness, justified by the closed case and late hour, and an inexplicable need to hurry - a feeling that he would miss something crucial if he did not keep his eye on the ball. He put it down to overexertion and remaining adrenaline, but still could not help striding quickly round to the tradesman’s entrance and darting up the back stairs of the house, almost racing after Ciel. Thoughts of his soiled coat slowed him down somewhat, and he paused to examine its pitifully blood-stained wool and noted to his chagrin that it would need replacing, but he only hesitated a moment in the hallway before locking up quickly and darting after the sound of his master’s footsteps.

The Earl paced up and down his study, his head throbbing. It was hot indoors after the frozen night air and his cheeks were flooded with colour, his eyelids heavy and his temples aching, all the exhaustion of a cold, wet night taking over, though he fought it valiantly. His mind was in turmoil, though he should have been at peace. The case was closed; Jack the Ripper was dead, funeral arrangements had been made, Sebastian would dispatch their report to the Yard and the Queen in the morning, skimming over the more unfortunate parts of the story as Ciel saw fit. After everything, the chase was over, the fight was done, and he, the Earl Phantomhive, an Aristocrat of Evil, Watchdog of the Queen, had once again come out on top. That was as it should be - everything was as it should be. His chest tightened and he struggled to breathe, pacing faster and faster. His hands tried to clench into fists at his sides but he could not help but remember the cold, hard shape of the gun in his hand, the pressure of his index on the trigger, the convulsive kick of the barrel when it went off - Ciel reached into his pocket and found the pistol still waiting there, ugly and squat as a British bulldog with its sawn-off muzzle and coiled springs, so different from the decorative pair of pistols he had received for his ninth birthday, the ones that he had trained with. His fingers clenched tight, his stomach roiling.

There was a soft click as the door opened and Sebastian entered. Ciel looked up, his eyes desolate. The butler looked back at him, poised in the entryway. He glanced from his master’s face to the gun in his hand, then said, “Is there anything you require, my lord?” His gaze did not leave the barrel of the shotgun.

Ciel watched him bitterly, then glanced down at the pistol again. His hand shook ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly, and a slow gleam of firelight ran the length of the barrel. With a sudden jerk of his arm, he flung the weapon from him, lobbing it into the corner of the room where it smacked against the bookshelves, skidded over the carpet and lay still. Sebastian watched its progress, and the Earl wondered whether it would not have been better to throw the gun at his servant. A sudden surge of hatred rose within him and he realised what this tumultuous sensation was, recognising his fury as it began to choke him, boiling, salty and viscous like blood. Glaring up into his butler’s eyes, he searched that empty mind with a searing, sweeping glance, accusation in every line of his form. Sebastian stared back, solemn, a little wary, a little condescending, and suddenly his master’s look turned savage, feral as a slap to the face. But his hand, which was twitching, did not move, and then he turned on his heel and began pacing furiously, every muscle in his body taut. With a tight, livid mouth, he hissed, “ _You did this._ ” He glared up at his butler, incriminating him with a ferocious look as he spat, “This is _your_ fault!” 

All it took was a slight crease between the butler’s eyebrows to induce a retort. Ciel’s certainty seemed to grow, his sapphire eye blazing in the dimness. “You _made_ me do it. You  _ told _ me to do it. You  _ forced _ me to do it!” He swung round to face his servant, incandescent, and Sebastian’s silence only seemed to spur him on more. “I could have left her - I could have saved her, I would have! I would have helped her, but you -” he drew breath so sharply it must have hurt - “ _ you _ would have me destroy her. You  _ made _ me kill her, planting that idea in my mind! On your head be it,  _ not  _ on MINE!”

_ Ah. _ Sebastian was as immovable as marble.  _ So this is it. _ He had wondered - it had always hung there, unsaid - conjecturing was of no use, of course, yet he had - it had always been a possibility that his master might not be strong enough to kill his own aunt. He had put on an exceptional show in Whitechapel; the butler had almost believed him. But here lay the root of the problem, here were his master’s feelings taking control of him, gaining the upper-hand once more.  _ Of course he would take it out on me. _ Ciel swung round, approaching his servant again, pointing, jabbing a finger in his face, his cheeks burning. And Sebastian realised it was something more than guilt for Madam Red’s death that made the Earl so incensed, and his eyes widened slightly. But it seemed as if Ciel was a hound on the scent, for he caught even that tiny change and grabbed hold of his butler’s lapels, drawing him down to his level and shaking him as hard as he could. “ _ You bastard _ !” he swore, seizing fistfuls of his servant’s collar, rattling him like a rottweiler with a rodent between its teeth. It seemed to take all of his strength even to do that much, and Ciel wondered how his servant managed to be so invulnerable, immovable. He tried again, hoisting himself up a little, trying to find purchase with his shoes on Sebastian’s smooth trousers, but they were too soft and he fell down again, slumping against the front of that uniform, his arms around his butler’s neck. Sebastian stood stock still, stooping slightly. His master buried his face in his chest, his shoulder, almost head-butting him, that persistent, defiant demand for attention, for some kind of reaction. He clutched at his servant for dear life, clinging to him, embracing him, and the damp heat of his breath was hot on Sebastian’s collarbone, his thin hands clammy and distinct at the nape of his neck, his silken hair just brushing the underside of the other man’s chin. Sebastian did not move a muscle, hardly daring to breathe. Anything, so much as the smallest crackle of the fireplace or the rattle of the windowpane, could disturb this moment, break it, put an end to it all and spoil the dream. But the fire did not crackle, nor did the window shake; the logs stayed put, the glass stayed put, and so did he.

Ciel began to explore the dark hollow at the base of his butler’s throat, trying to lose himself. Still struggling somewhat, grunting with futile effort, he pressed his face into the side of that neck and inhaled, imbibing that warmth. The scent of Sebastian’s skin was intoxicatingly familiar, that same scent that had clung to the shirts he had worn in bed after his imprisonment, the same scent he had searched for in Sebastian’s room, the same scent that had been all-too-faint a memory in his mind as he masturbated, the same scent that now overpowered him. He put his lips to that warm skin, wanting to touch, to feel, to taste, and he was not disappointed. There was a contradictory, rough-smooth texture to his butler’s hide, unchafed, untainted, but older, too, solid and lived-in and masculine. He ran his mouth over that patch again, swiping it with his tongue, and tasted the salt, the sweat, the cologne and the sweetness of pheromones. Sebastian swallowed, in spite of himself, the damp, feather-light touch as soft and momentous as the flash of butterfly wings, enough to stir the rising heat in his body, enough for him to risk putting his hands on Ciel’s back, holding him firmly in place. The boy’s breath quickened as he felt the bob of his servant’s adam’s apple and he dragged his lips over it, his kisses becoming more confident. Sebastian closed his eyes, unable to quite control the hissing of his breath, much less the self-evident hammering of his pulse under his master’s mouth. Those long white fingers tangled themselves in the dark crown of his hair, gripping tight, holding his head at the base of the scalp so that Sebastian could not move an inch, only feel the welcome tension in his flesh. Ciel moved back slightly, still clinging on, and as Sebastian opened his eyes, so did his master.

They regarded one another for a second, the butler gazing slightly down, the Earl’s face tilted slightly up. That blue gaze was intent, sweeping, searching the liquid fire in the servant’s eyes for recognition. The boldness of that look sent a shiver through Sebastian, and Ciel seemed to find what he was looking for, for his expression altered ever so slightly, and he almost smiled. Sebastian’s gaze was hot, unwavering. The boy thought he was in control; he would get his comeuppance. He waited, waited for an eternity, while Ciel made up his mind, and then just as eternity drew to a close his master leaned in, his eyes closing, and captured his lips. Sebastian’s eyes flew open, flaring up, the soft touch of that untrained mouth an elixir, a poison. The boy had never kissed anyone before - his technique was sloppy, reticent and passionate, an excellent attempt, but an attempt nonetheless. His servant decided to show him how it was done.

Reaching out, Sebastian closed his eyes and tightened his grip on the Earl’s waist, tilting his head slightly to gain better access to that devious mouth. Ciel gasped and broke the kiss temporarily, opening his eyes, but when he saw his butler’s look he closed them again, leaning in, allowing his mouth to open and be plundered by the other’s tongue. Kissing felt so much more intimate than he had expected, and at the same time, it seemed odd; like a surrogate for something more, a symbolic moment, not quite a sensory one. He was more interested in the hand at the small of his back which seemed to burn a hole in his clothes, and the proximity that he now perceived between their pelvises. On impulse, he bucked his hips forward, and was met with far more than he had expected, his servant’s hardness already straining against his trousers. His breath came to a halt and he broke the kiss again to gasp, feeling just how huge that shape was, his mind on fire as he ground against it. Sebastian let out a low growl and Ciel moaned, gripping those shoulders with all his might, his hands now trying to drag the tailcoat off his butler’s back.

For the first time, Sebastian seemed to resist. Taking hold of Ciel’s wrists, he lifted them away from his neck and placed them down at his sides. For a second, Ciel thought that his servant had got cold feet already, and indignation rose within him, but then the butler did something more surprising; he put a hand under Ciel’s knees and another behind his back, and hoisted him into the air, carrying him in his arms as he had done so many years ago. Instinctively, the Earl clung onto him, a hand around his neck, picking somewhat recalcitrantly at his butler’s uniform with the other, alternately kneading and pounding the hard flesh through the stubborn fabric. Sebastian carried him out of his study and began to proceed upstairs, ignoring his master entirely. Again Ciel wondered if this was a rebuke, if Sebastian was going to leave him alone in his room, but then he felt the hard shape beneath him shifting in his servant’s trousers and kept quiet, ashamed, unable to find his voice. It was only as they turned another corner that he finally summoned up the courage to speak. 

“Where are you taking me?” he asked, his voice coming out somewhat more muffled and resentful that he had intended. He felt his servant’s snort.

“To your room, young master,” Sebastian replied, contempt in his voice. “Where else?” 

Ciel couldn’t think what to reply to that, so instead he twisted round in his butler’s arms so that his legs were around his waist and they were face to face once more. Sebastian’s eyes only flicked to his master’s once, something sardonic mixed in with that pooling heat, which was burning far brighter than ever before, then he looked away. The Earl began another assault on his attention, putting his mouth to the side of that throat and biting down, hard, on the vulnerable stretch of skin. The butler hissed and Ciel wondered if it had hurt, but then he felt how Sebastian’s hardness thumped against him and dug his teeth in again, harder this time, his eyes burning, his hips flush against his servant’s. Then they were outside his bedroom door, and his butler put him down again. Ciel began to feel self-conscious now that he was on his own two feet, glancing down, his cheeks bright red. Sebastian contemplated his master, noting the strange docility that had crept up on him, and grinned. His voice soft, he said, “Ladies first,” gesturing. Ciel did not look at him, only took a deep breath, put his hand on the door-handle, and entered the room.

It was dark within. A fire burned in the grate, beginning to smoulder, and Sebastian twitched slightly as the urge to set things right came over him, so that he had to positively resist going over and stoking the blaze. He settled for lighting a few of the oil lamps while his master waited just inside the threshold. Each feared to let the other out of his sight lest he vanish like an apparition, composed of nothing but fantasy, as inconstant as the wind. When the servant turned back to face his master, the Earl looked him up and down and reached out, once again tugging on his clothes, attempting to remove them. Sebastian smiled faintly at his persistence and murmured, “Not yet.” His eyes gleamed, and when Ciel looked up to see what he meant he let out a low breath. Sebastian’s lips twitched. “Ladies first,” he repeated softly.

Ciel’s jaw tightened and he turned his face away, his pulse hammering at his neck. Sebastian took this as assent and began undoing his master’s cravat, sliding the silk ribbon out from under that starched white collar, then unpinning the collar from the shirt and tossing both pieces aside. He removed the pair of priceless cufflinks next, and, making sure to pierce one cuff with them both so that they would not get lost, dropped them on the ground beside the rest. Ciel’s jacket followed, landing in a heap. Sebastian was slow in undoing his shirt, taking each button at a time, trailing his fingers down that narrow marble chest as it was revealed to him. The sweat collected in Ciel’s palms, the tension in his body building. He stepped backwards and Sebastian stepped forwards, moving closer to the bed, and when his master was sitting down Sebastian began to undo his laces, chucking the heavy, soiled boots aside, drawing down the long woollen socks, revealing those slender legs and feet, beautiful, pointed feet. He lingered, squeezing the ligaments and tendons in that heel, testing, flexing each foot, savouring. Ciel wanted to shove his toes into Sebastian’s face, knock his teeth out, but he didn’t, unable to realise his impatience. Instead he remained motionless, quivering, as his butler reached for his fly, kneeling at his feet, and unbuttoned it slowly, pulling his trousers down and discarding them. Beneath his shorts, Ciel was utterly naked. Feeling very exposed, he dug his fingers into the bedsheets, Sebastian’s eyes all over him, moving closer to observe his cock, slender and pert and tall like its owner, with a flushed pink tip. The head was slick with pre-cum, the base surrounded by fine, curling hair, darker than the silver strands on Ciel’s head, a little thicker and coarser. Wasting no more time, Sebastian pushed his master’s legs apart, took his cock in his gloved hand and brought it to his mouth.

Ciel tensed, surprised, his eyes wide. It was not long before he melted, however - as soon as he felt that solvent heat around his erection he sank into the mattress, flopping back, biting into his own hand. “ _ Fuck _ ,” he hissed, the fricative turning into air. He tried not to moan but it was almost impossible; Sebastian was simply  _ everywhere _ , his hands massaging Ciel’s thighs, his tongue swirling round the head of his cock, flicking against the tip so that Ciel bucked into his mouth. The boy tasted delicious, all sweat and salt and shame, sweet and sour with desire and denial. Then he had the bright idea of resuming that iron grip in his servant’s hair, and Sebastian found himself pushed mercilessly down into his master’s lap so that he had to take him deeper, Ciel thrusting into the back of his throat, fucking his mouth, tangling his fingers in the masses of black strands and thumping his servant’s shoulders with his feet.  _ His hair is so soft.  _ The Earl’s eyes burned, sudden tears blinding him, seeping into his hair. He could not conceive of how impossibly intense this pleasure was, how much better than his own fist, how much hotter, how much more agonising. Dragging his nails over his servant’s scalp, he loosened his grip, unable to hold on much longer. The butler felt that sharp pain and growled, baring his teeth, scraping them over Ciel’s delicate foreskin so that his master cried out wantonly, coughing, choking on his own lust, incapable of silencing himself however much he tried. But then Sebastian felt his erection kick inside his throat, beginning to throb, and he released it from his mouth and sat up, licking his lips, leaving his master on the edge.

Ciel almost shouted in fury. Spluttering, he struggled to find the words to express his outrage, his mind utterly blank. But before he could say anything Sebastian was pushing him back onto the bed, climbing atop him, and now he was actually loosening his tie, his eyes terribly bright. Ciel could hardly breathe, inhaling in short, asthmatic gasps, struggling to get a grip on reality. Before he had time to think, his servant was unbuttoning his shirt, revealing that pale, broad chest, that slender waist, that trail of thick, dark hair that led below his belt, looping round his belly button, and then his teeth clamped around the end of his glove and those were coming off too. It was so excessive, this display, but it was impossible for Ciel to look away, impossible for him to snap out of it long enough to criticise, to think beyond _Dear God..._ The Earl could only stare, unable to process, stuck in the moment, his calculating mind stumped. Sebastian’s sharp grin hovered over him in the semi-darkness, those white teeth gleaming as his butler unbuttoned his trousers. Ciel choked on his own spit, gulping, trying to sit up on his elbows. His servant saw his fear and only smiled more, his eyes flashing, dragging down his trousers and shorts so he was totally bare.

His eyes wide, Ciel stared at his servant’s erection. It was huge, enormous, throbbing like a living thing and surrounded by a coronet of thick, dark hair that spread out in all directions. The head alone was twice the size of Ciel’s, to say nothing of the purple-flushed shaft, tapering towards the tip, undoubtedly thicker than all of Ciel’s fingers put together. He tried to see a way around it, a way out of it, but there was none - again and again, the Earl’s eyes were drawn to that shape, ridiculously hard, slick and livid, so utterly enormous he hardly thought it would fit in his hand, never mind anywhere else. Now Sebastian was shifting, his long, statuesque legs settling themselves higher and higher up Ciel’s body, and the Earl only realised what he was going to do by the time it was too late. He opened his mouth in protest, but that smile paralysed him, silencing him, Sebastian taking his cock in his ungloved hand and guiding it towards his master’s mouth. Faced with that look of utter calm and complacency, Ciel was unable to do otherwise than open his lips. 

The first sensations overpowered him. The intoxicating scent of Sebastian, stronger than ever before, was all around him, mixed in with something animal, something hot and salty and syrupy that he knew all too well himself, the odour of arousal, of slick and sweat and semen. Then the taste assaulted his mouth, the rough texture dragging over his tongue, and he felt with awe each one of the ridges and bumps and throbbing veins, an entire landscape of pleasure. It occurred to him for the first time that this was more than an object, more than a symbol, more than a weapon - it was part of his butler, warm and alive and directly connected to him, a part of him that could be harmed or caressed, a gift that he had just been given. It was this knowledge, his servant’s vulnerability, which made him open his mouth for more, savouring the bitterness of that flavour, half-choking, his jaw aching as he tried to accommodate the enormity of his butler’s erection. Sebastian held him firmly by the chin, gripping himself in his hand and pushing deeper into that warmth, disinclined to be considerate but just sane enough not to rush. Then, when as much of his cock as would fit in Ciel’s mouth was engulfed, he reached round to the hair on the back of the boy’s head and, with a surge of triumph, tangled his long fingers in the silk strands. He did not grip very tight, and certainly did not drag his nails over his master’s scalp as Ciel had done to him, but it was enough; more than enough. The cock in the Earl’s mouth was better than a rebuke. And then Ciel began to suck.

It was difficult to get his tongue all the way around the intrusion in his mouth, so he started out slowly, remembering how Sebastian had done it to him. Hollowing out his cheeks, he felt the thing bump against his larynx and coughed, choking. Sebastian did not let up, only pushed his head down more insistently, thrusting into that delicate, temperamental throat. But Ciel wanted it - he hated it, he denied it, but he wanted it - and so he sucked harder, spluttering, struggling to breathe, feeling the pain of his asthma tighten in his chest. His eyelids were pressed shut and once again, searing liquid began to leak out from underneath them, running down his cheeks and mixing with the slick that dripped from his chin. He couldn’t help but moan, his sounds muffled, and Sebastian’s answering, guttural growl made him dizzy with desire. He drank in the slick and spit that was escaping from between his lips, reaching for the base of his butler’s cock, covering that warm, white hand with his own and digging into the nest of hair with his fingernails, trying his hardest to take all of Sebastian’s ballsack in one hand while he supported himself with the other. His servant bucked his hips mercilessly, grunting, and Ciel lost control, unable to breathe, unable to see, unable to speak, unable to think. That cock pulsed and throbbed between his lips, seeming to growing even larger, but then the hand at the back of his head was gone and Sebastian was withdrawing, and Ciel collapsed, panting, choking, his eyes opening as he tried to recover his breath.

Contemplating the mess he had made of his master, Sebastian sighed with delight. Shifting his position, his cock in his hand, he said, “There. Now we’re equal.” Ciel did not reply, still blinking, wheezing. Sebastian smiled down at him. “Isn’t that what you wanted? To be equals? To get even?” Ciel did not even have the strength to answer him, to call him a prick. He didn’t know what he wanted anymore - he didn’t know how to think. They were both naked, both lying on his bed, which was looking more and more dishevelled by the second, and he wondered then what he wouldn’t do, where he wouldn’t go. As if thinking the same thing, Sebastian glanced sidelong at him, his eyes narrow and bright, and lifted up one of Ciel’s legs, kissing the soft skin on the inside of his knee. The Earl opened his eyes again, his shaft twitching slightly. Sebastian smiled deviously, his feminine lashes flickering, and pressed another kiss to that smooth skin, making his way down, higher and higher up his master’s thighs, kissing each stretch mark, each fine silver hair, bending those supple legs up and out of the way till he was kneeling between Ciel’s thighs, his mouth inches away from his cock. Ciel thought he was going to suck on him again, but this time it seemed Sebastian had something else in mind, for he placed a kiss on Ciel’s tight ballsack and dragged his teeth over his perineum, making his master jump. The butler chuckled, but the Earl was not amused. He glanced down between his legs, perturbed, but the sight of Sebastian festering there forestalled him through its sheer eroticism, and another wave of desire washed over him, rendering him helpless.

This window was all Sebastian needed. Moving lower, angling Ciel’s hips up, he swept his tongue over that tight ring of muscle, licking and kissing it unabashedly. The Earl’s face burned with shame at being so exposed and he shrank away from the foreign feeling of his butler’s mouth, his muscles tensing, but the more Sebastian persisted the more he felt himself relaxing, unclenching, opening up for him. He covered his mouth with a hand when he realised what his servant was about to do, the unspeakable heresy of it. Instead of an order or curse or admonishment, a long groan left his lips, and Sebastian plunged his tongue inside that tight, fluctuating ring of muscle, thrusting in and out. Ciel felt the wrongness of it so intensely that the bile rose in his throat and he stiffened, tightening almost painfully around his butler’s tongue - but then something else overcame him, a wave of shivers so intense that they racked his body and rendered him utterly defenceless. He cried out, his sounds merging into one long, suffering sigh, filled with desire. Sebastian worked him harder, thrusting his tongue in and out, reaching up inside that dark, pungent cavity to find that one, particular sweet spot, though he could hardly reach it. Ciel let out a soft, high-pitched whine, surprised, unable to even feel ashamed afterwards, so overcome was he. This feeling was entirely different, far more consuming than the frustrated, harsh, swift pleasure of jerking off, so much more fulfilling and deep. A coolness spread through him like the sucking of the swell, a tide of new emotions and feelings rising out of the deep. He had not been touched here for years, not since - not since - not since that day, not since the cellar, not since he had been molested. The tears ran down his cheeks, alternating hot and cold, and once again he closed up as Sebastian withdrew, his body remembering pain and old trauma too late.

The butler got up, shifting position. He surveyed Ciel, who, aching with desire, had curled up into a self-protective ball, and loomed over him a bit more. It seemed as if the boy believed it was over; perhaps he should enlighten him. Tugging a little on that slender arm, he began to spread his master out beneath him, unfolding his limbs one by one. Curiosity and desire flared up within the Earl, who opened his eyes, the blue and the murky magenta irises fraught with emotion. He waited while Sebastian moved around, catching his breath as the servant hovered over him, then followed his butler’s gaze as it moved down his body. His eyes widened when he saw what he was doing. Sebastian’s enormous cock, still hot and hard, bobbed above his stomach as the butler contemplated its size, wondering if his master could take it, almost mocking him as he rested his erection lightly against his abdomen. Ciel swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry.  _ He wouldn’t dare _ , he thought, but then wondered, too, where else he had believed this would lead. After all, he had read Sebastian’s file - he knew what this man did, what he was. It seemed his servant had tired of his game, though, for now he got to his feet, sliding off the bed, and rummaged about in the pile of clothing, eventually withdrawing a small glass phial. Ciel frowned at it suspiciously; the bottle was elegant and opaque, made from blue crystal, the sort of tasteful but ultimately worthless trinket a servant of Sebastian’s standing might possess. Still, he didn’t see its relevance now - not until Sebastian settled between his legs once more, spreading them determinedly, his weight making a dent in the mattress, and contemplated the fine, dark hair at the apex of Ciel’s thighs. Then his master began to divine an inkling of his intentions and sat up, his heart hammering. 

He said nothing, unable to speak, but Sebastian looked at him, his smile spreading wide once more. “This will be easier if you relax, my lord,” he murmured, his tones breathy and dark. Ciel stared at him, then slowly lowered himself back down. The butler breathed a little easier. He had not really expected his master to resist, but it would be better for the both of them if there wasn’t a struggle. Uncorking the bottle, he poured a little of the contents into his hand, slicking up his fingers. Ciel found himself shallow-breathing and tried to slow down, but everything was going so fast and the tight heat in his chest just kept building and building, no matter what he did. His butler seemed to perform every operation with the utmost perverse delight, an unhallowed ecstasy that only proved how twisted he was, when Ciel compared it with the divine, dark, euphoric despair that seemed to be pulsing through his own mind. He remembered the words of Undertaker, Madam Red, Abberline, all of them terrified of the presence at his side, the dangerous criminal, and thought with bitter irony of the pointlessness of their warnings now. He had found out the truth, and -

Ciel’s musings were cut short as Sebastian spread his legs once more, mouthing a few times at the base of his cock, then circling around his hole with fingers that dripped oil and slick. The Earl had to bite down on his pillow to keep quiet, his adductor muscles trembling, but Sebastian lifted his mouth away expressly to tell him not to be silent. The master’s eyes flashed and the servant grinned; it was the latter giving the orders now, the former helpless to do anything other than obey. A few more sweeps of the butler’s tongue set him on fire, Ciel now incapable of doing anything more than spreading his legs even wider, but then something else replaced that devious mouth and Ciel clenched his fists in the bedsheets. That long, slender finger, such as he had so often admired - he felt it now, felt it  _ inside him _ , his butler’s hand inside him, and the thought was so overwhelmingly erotic that he nearly spilled then and there. Squeezing his eyes tight shut, he tried to relax, clenching around the intrusion. One finger was almost alright, until it was all the way in; then he felt the burn begin, and cried out, whether from pleasure or pain he could not tell. 

Sebastian reached for his master’s cock and made a loose fist around it, his eyes fixed on the Earl’s face as he pumped slowly. He dragged his hand up and down, fondling the sensitive head, spreading more slick and oil over it so that Ciel let out a breathy gasp. With his other hand, he added two fingers, beginning to fuck the boy slowly, stretching him, working his tense muscles. Ciel was reluctant and fought the intrusion with all his might, yet the pleasure that gripped him was merciless, earth-shaking, overmastering, so that he felt himself trembling, every nerve-ending on fire, and was unable to summon up the breath to deny his butler. It was too fast, the friction was too much, he was going, he was going to - and yet it was so good, and those long fingers were curling inside of him, hitting some spot, a place he had never known before, a warm, spreading pleasure that was so unlike anything else - but he couldn’t take it, it was too soon, it was too much at once! Sebastian took his hand off Ciel’s cock and began to fondle himself impatiently, fucking his fist as he fucked his master with his other hand, unable to stand it much longer. It was only two fingers, for fuck’s sake, the boy could take more than that; he was dying for it.  _ Slut. _ He added a third and Ciel threw back his head, baring the pale column of his throat. Sebastian would leave a few marks on that virgin skin.  _ All in good time. _ His master was moaning, crying out, and Sebastian rutted harder into his hand, in danger of crossing over. Opening his mouth, he asked in a rough, dark voice, “What is it that you want, whore?” 

The boy did not answer for a moment, only moaned again - and then his servant made out, “More! More,  _ more _ , more, oh,  _ Sebastian _ .” He was quite lost, his eyes all but closed, alternately moaning and hissing with the friction. At the invocation of his name the butler swore and ceased altogether, incapable of waiting any longer. He shifted position, withdrawing his fingers, and the boy moaned piteously, then went quiet. He seemed to realise that something was happening, for he swallowed, glancing down, then up into Sebastian’s eyes. The burning heat there told him everything he needed to know. Suddenly the Earl’s throat was dry, he couldn’t speak, couldn’t protest - but he wanted to, he wanted to stop. Those tears from earlier were dangerously close to returning, though he hated them, and he gritted his teeth, glancing down again. His eyes widened when he saw that Sebastian had his cock in his hand. “No,” he breathed hoarsely, his heart pounding. “No, that’s - it won’t - you can’t, you  _ can’t _ -” His protests turned into one long, suffering moan, full of shame, pain and pleasure, as Sebastian eased the oiled-up head of his cock inside. That tight heat was so utterly delectable and overwhelming that he had to halt, and then he heard Ciel’s whimper of pain, his fury, his fear. His flaming eyes only burned all the brighter as Ciel bit down on his hand, clinging on so hard with his teeth that he drew blood. It was too much, too soon, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t speak, his heart hurt, his chest hurt, his throat hurt, his head hurt, everything hurt - and yet, there it was. He felt himself opening up for his servant and remembered a time when he had been touched here before, when his clothes had been ripped from him and something had been forced inside him, one after another, they had all had their turn, and - and - it had hurt  _ so much _ , it had been agony, blinding agony, he had passed out and when he woke up -

Thick, hot tears welled up in his eyes, blinding him, and ran down his cheeks. Some of the water collected in his ears, some in his hair, staining the pillow, leaving sticky trails behind on his skin. Sebastian was breathing heavily above him, pausing as Ciel’s warmth flexed around him. The Earl didn’t understand why he didn’t just push in; why wouldn’t he just go all the way, when there was enough oil to make it work? A new emotion arose within him, a kind of defiant anger, a self-destructive despair that told him to just get on with it, to let it be over and done with. Then he wished he hadn’t thought it at all, for Sebastian moved again, sliding deeper, and this time he didn’t stop until he had bottomed out, filling the boy up. That dark cavity was so unbelievably warm, so damp and porous and soft, it was all Sebastian could do not to come on the spot. For how many years had he pictured this moment, enacting it in vain with the many other boys he had picked up on street corners? He breathed deeply, lowering his head to plant a hot kiss in the centre of Ciel’s chest. His master opened his eyes, surprised, and then felt the scrape of Sebastian’s teeth as he marked him, moving higher, circling tantalisingly around one pale nipple, then sinking his teeth into the side of his neck. That made Ciel gasp in the spite of himself, and when he had recovered from that, he became aware for the first time of the incredible heat in his groin and the matching warmth inside him, so complete, so full, leaving not an inch of space untouched. He let out a little, half-formed cry, barely more than a gasp, but Sebastian heard it.

The butler lifted his head. His master’s cheeks were stained with tears but still flushed a deep colour, and his eyes, clouded with pleasure, still held within them that sharp anger and defiance that gave them their light. Leaning in greedily, Sebastian plundered his master’s mouth again, pressing their lips together and sliding his tongue inside, wanting to leave no part of the Earl’s body untouched. In his turn, Ciel reciprocated fiercely, dragging his nails through his servant’s hair just hard enough for it to hurt. In answer, Sebastian moved his hips, and Ciel’s grip loosened, his arms falling back beside him on the bed as that burning pain returned. To his shame, the tears in his eyes resumed and he could not stop crying this time, silently weeping as Sebastian took him slowly, mercilessly thrusting in and out, drawing out the pain, the pleasure, the embarrassment. The butler pinned him in place and began to pick up speed and Ciel cried harder, moaning, letting out a long, breathy sigh that he tried to curtail. The image of his captors and abusers began to fade, disappearing from memory, replaced by the image of those molten topaz eyes, dripping fire, and the dishevelled black hair hanging around that hungry face. He clenched around his butler, wrapping his legs around him, fighting free of his hold so he could rake his hands over that pristine white back and feel the muscles under his nails, digging in hard enough to leave welts. Sebastian slammed his hips in particularly hard when Ciel did that, hissing, “ _ Slut _ .” The Earl moaned out loud, each thrust shaking him, the friction painful but the blows good, so good, immeasurably intense so that all distinctions between pleasure and pain seemed to waver, becoming blurred. 

Now his servant was going harder, faster, and the pain became so acute that more tears leaked from Ciel’s eyes and he cried out. Sebastian covered his mouth with a hand, stifling his noises and complaints, fucking him harder and harder and whispering, “ _ Whore _ .” Ciel bit his hand and Sebastian drew it aside, startled, then tried smothering the noise with his mouth instead, kissing his master hard enough to bruise his lips and silence him. Not to be outdone, Ciel bit down hard on Sebastian’s bottom lip, getting it between his teeth and crushing it in protest, and Sebastian groaned, letting out a stream of filthy language as he feasted on Ciel’s neck and chest. He slipped a hand between them and reached for his master’s cock, pumping it in his fingers so that Ciel began to quiver even harder than before, moaning over and over. All pain was gone, replaced only by star-shattering pleasure, catapulting him to this realm of eternal darkness where the only light was the fire behind his eyes, the hellfire that warmed him, the pool of white-hot desire that spread out in waves from his core, reaching to his farthest extremities, his fingers tingling and tensing and loosing, his toes curling, his voice raised in a monotonous chant that he could not control. Sebastian was moaning too, his cock enveloped by that heat, his master’s heat, an overwhelming heat that was more alive than anything he had ever tasted, gripping him so tightly, so slick and wanton and ready. Every deep, rough moan of the butler’s induced an answering, stilted, keening cry, a breathy, “ _ Sebastian! _ ” Ciel could take it no longer. He was so close to the edge that he could not tell what would happen, whether he would fall through darkness or become eternal light. He wanted to sob, he wanted to scream, he wanted to laugh, he wanted it never to end, never. The thought of being fucked by Sebastian,  _ Sebastian _ , the servant, the scoundrel, the seducer, becoming one with him, their selves conjoined - it was so wrong, so wonderfully, beautifully, pervertedly wrong, and then he opened his eyes, almost unable to endure, and saw those burning eyes glowing in the dark like molten magma, and with a stilted cry - “ _ S-Sebastian - _ ” he spilled all over his chest, the pleasure shooting through his cock, twitching and shuddering.

The butler felt, rather than saw, his master’s orgasm, so intent was he upon the boy’s face. He didn’t miss a single detail of that expression, etching every inch of it into his consciousness, his mouth watering, his mind almost blank, filled only with one desire. That he had deflowered the boy, that he had brought him to orgasm, that he had taken every last vestige of his innocence from him as he had always dreamt of doing - that was the ultimate aphrodisiac, sending him spiralling out of control so that he slammed his hips into Ciel’s, fucking him hard and fast and rough, the boy weeping and moaning from oversensitivity, and then, and then - every face he’d ever had was gone, in an instant, replaced only by Ciel’s, his cock throbbing and thumping like a wild beast inside his master as he came, filling him with his semen so that it dripped out of his hole and onto the bed. Slamming in to the hilt, Sebastian rode out the last waves of his orgasm, his face pressed into Ciel’s neck, drinking his tears, inhaling and savouring his scent, so unique, so sour and sweet, so filled with pheromones and denial. His hips kept thrusting and jerking, out of control, the tremors and aftershocks rendering him erratic. Ciel felt all of that tight, choking, viscous heat in his chest dissolve, expanding outwards in a wave of light that was followed by a coolness, a clarity, a freedom and a slow descent into reality.

The first thing he noticed was Sebastian’s hands on his hips. The man was lying on top of him, crushing him, his slender body made extra heavy by all those muscles, his fingers digging into his master’s pelvis so hard that Ciel could feel the bruises already. Then he felt the soreness in his neck where his butler had bitten him, the bitter taste of his pre-cum still filling his dry mouth, and the weight of that dark, shaggy head where it rested against him. Sebastian roused himself and pulled out, the friction of his cock against Ciel’s sphincter reminding the boy of his blinding agony - and indeed, as his arousal dropped off he seemed to awaken, the pounding ache in his back and thighs and abdomen making his throat seize up. His servant got off him, then, hearing his hiss of discomfort, said in his rough, dark voice, “Breathe with your diaphragm. It’ll help.”

Ciel turned his face away, lying still. “Fuck off,” he whispered, hoarse.

Sebastian regarded him for a second, the warm glow in his eyes matching the dying embers of the fire, then turned away, stretching. “I’ll run you a bath, shall I, whore?” he said mildly, his mouth quirking up at the corners. Ciel said nothing, so he repeated himself. “A bath, who-”

“Don’t,” Ciel muttered, cutting him off. 

Sebastian thought he heard a slight snivel and snorted softly. So the boy was already crying again; he was even less resilient than he looked. He opened his mouth to ask again, this time saying, “I take it you do want a bath, Ciel?” If his master would not respond to pet names or insults, then perhaps he would respond to this.

Ciel sat bolt upright, his eyes wide. “Don’t you  _ dare _ address me by that name,” he spat, his teeth clenched. “You  _ know _ what that means, you  _ know _ -” He struggled to regain his composure, his breathing harsh. “I ordered you never to lie. So don’t. You will use my proper title, as befits a servant. That’s an order.”

Sebastian paused, then sighed. “As you wish, my lord,” he murmured, sketching a mock bow in the direction of the bed. It was ironic, his master getting on his high horse after he had been begging for his servant’s cock only minutes before, but Sebastian could not complain. He had taken his dues already, and, with any luck, he would take them again, soon - perhaps he could have them any time he liked, if he played his cards right.

Ciel listened to the sound of those heavy, even footfalls, the click of the bathroom door, and the gush of the taps as Sebastian turned on the water, the pipes groaning. A bath would be nice - he could still feeling Sebastian’s semen oozing out of him, now cold. He shifted position wearily, rolling onto his side. Now that it was over he was utterly exhausted, and only the burning pain shooting through his spine every time he moved kept him from simply falling asleep, though he did not want to sleep yet; not like this. He tried to get to his feet but once he was upright the pain became debilitating and he fell, stumbling forwards, Sebastian catching him just in time. The butler picked him up in his arms, admonishing him. “Really, my lord,” he murmured in the boy’s ear. “You should know better than to try and walk in such a state. Allow me to take care of you.” 

Ciel’s cheeks burned and, to his shame (for he had been holding them back quite successfully) he found the tears returning to his eyes, that tiresome feeling of the icky fluid rising in his tearducts and overflowing, one more humiliation on top of everything else. He allowed Sebastian to carry him to the bathtub and deposit him in it. The warm water helped to soothe his aches and pains, although it also drew his attention to some that he had not noticed before, the scratches and bites their fucking had left behind. To even sit down was a torment, but in time the heat managed to assuage that somewhat, all the sweat, slick, blood and mud from the events of the last twenty-four hours dissolving into the bathwater. Sebastian washed his body, taking great care with the cloth, soaping up the hollows of his body, wiping away his tears as perfunctorily and calmly as he wiped away every other bodily fluid, then washing his hair and massaging Ciel’s scalp. With his firm, gentle fingers the Earl felt a tiny flicker of the former warmth stir in his groin, but he was too exhausted to get hard again. When he was done, he allowed his butler to lift him out, towel him down, and dress him in a nightshirt. The shirt did not smell of Sebastian but his bedsheets did and, though Sebastian had changed the coverlet, it was warm and dark and fragrant underneath and Ciel curled up instantly, safe in the silence of his sheets.

Once his master was in bed, Sebastian took advantage of the bathroom, allowing himself a rare moment of relaxation. He had earned it, after all - all his efforts had finally come to fruition. Yes, he deserved this extra reward, especially with the exhaustion of the night’s events. He felt quite spent, his age, which so rarely affected him, asserting itself properly for once. He was fastidious in cleaning himself, leaving the bathwater a little murkier after he got out. Looking in the mirror, he tugged unsympathetically at the traces of wrinkles in his brow, almost invisible, yet just a little too permanent. Thankfully he did not smile enough to get lines around his eyes, although there were a few around his mouth from all that smirking.  _ Hmph. _ His job was immensely strenuous, after all; perhaps he could find a way to lighten his duties. After tonight, he felt there was nothing his master would not let him do.  _ Except perhaps leave _ . He chuckled to himself, sluicing out his mouth. He had no intention of doing  _ that. _

When he emerged from the bathroom he had already set things to rights in the room, so he pulled on a shirt and headed straight for the bed. He climbed in beside the boy, listening to his breathing. His eyes were closed, but it didn’t sound like Ciel was asleep - he should drift off soon enough, tired as he was. Sebastian hoped he hadn’t been too harsh on the boy; it would always have hurt, that was the way of things, although he could have pretended to be kind.  _ He’ll have to get used to that, too _ . His mouth curled in a smile and he settled down on the pillow with a sigh, breathing in the pleasant, familiar scent of his master, mingled with his own. Ciel’s hand was tucked under the pillow, tight around something.  _ His pistol. _ Sebastian couldn’t blame him - who would? It had been a long night for them both. He heard his master slip into dreamland, his breath slowing down, and let out a sigh himself. One hand draped over the covers and the boy’s waist, he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew. That was a workout...
> 
> Well, here we are - two more chapters in which to wrap it up, and the weather's turning; where I am, storm winds, early nights, fallen leaves and truly gothic full moons have arrived. This has been one hell of a ride and has sustained me over the whole pandemic thus far...who knows when I'll write something again. Maybe soon, maybe never. Enjoy the last two chapters :)


	20. In the Morning: That Butler, Investigated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> London is up in arms in the aftermath of Mary Kelly's murder, and Inspector Abberline decides to takes matters into his own hands. He wants to help Ciel, but gets more than he bargained for...

London was up in arms in the days after the body of Mary Kelly was discovered. Press swarmed all over the crime scene, gruesome images of the brutal murder covering every front page, specials on Jack the Ripper, Spring-Heeled Jack and the Horror of the East End filling the insides of broadsheets and tabloids alike. At night, the men of Whitechapel swarmed the streets in pairs or groups, never alone for fear of suspicion, vigilantes out hunting for the abomination that seemed to be driving everyone insane, swearing that they would wring the Ripper’s neck or worse. The women, on the other hand, did not dare go out, even in broad daylight, much less after dark; they huddled together on dosshouse floors, the matron watching over them, sharing warmth, horror stories and lice, taunting each other and crying that they were next. It seemed as if there would be a riot, the biggest one that London had ever seen - even the nobility were restless, constantly out visiting, exchanging theories, pouring tea with gleeful and horrified looks as they decried the atavism of the lower classes. Everyone seemed sure that something was going to happen, something worse than any of them had yet seen, something to tip the balance of history forever.

Inspector Abberline was no stranger to Ripper-mania; indeed, he felt just as restless as everyone else, and hardly went home for three days straight after the murder of Mary Kelly. Time and time again, he examined the crime scene, though he had a difficult job keeping the public out, much less the reporters. Suddenly they were all criminals, suddenly they were all celebrities; newspaper articles appeared everywhere full of confessions and anonymous letters, from the crudest and most unconvincing hoaxes to the most sickeningly complete accounts, though of course they were all fake. Yet in their plodding, ponderous way, the police examined everything, forced to take everything into consideration, and fights broke out between the City, the Met and the Yard as to whom took precedence in this case, who had the right to investigate. After all, everyone wanted the fame of winning, of being the one to mete out justice, but none the infamy that might come with having missed the Ripper or made some other grievous error - the very smog seemed electrified, though it was a cold, dull autumn, and it was impossible to sleep without starting up every five seconds, gripped by some new theory or the heart-stopping terror that a stranger was at the door. Increasingly frustrated with his department, Abberline decided to go it alone as much as he could, and spent every day combing the streets around Mary Kelly’s abode for some sign, some piece of evidence, _something,_ _anything_ that might prove useful.

It didn’t help that Earl Phantomhive had disappeared. No one said anything, not even Randall, but Abberline was shocked by the absence of the little Lord, whom he had come to regard as a regular feature of their investigation. Several times he had tried to ask his superior if Ciel had been taken off the case, but it seemed Randall was simply too busy to answer;  _ he’s avoiding me _ , Abberline thought darkly. He paced up and down the filthy alleyway for the umpteenth time, squatting down, his nose to the ground, and peering at the dirt as if it would render up its secrets to him. After all, it did seem strange that, right after the final murder, Ciel suddenly vanished from sight, and Randall was acting exceptionally oddly. He sighed, racking his brains, scouring the fetid earth. He couldn’t help but feel that there was something vital that they were missing, an important piece of the puzzle that would not reveal itself. He raked over a patch of gravel, wrinkling his nose at the smell. The only thing he had found so far had been not only grisly, but utterly extraordinary - remnants of what appeared to be grey matter, bits of brain and skull, crushed into the paving stones.  _ Murkier and murkier. _ Though Mary Kelly’s face was gone, the killer had not penetrated to the brain - had not needed to, after what he’d done to the rest of her.  _ So whose little grey cells are these? _ He swallowed his bile, shaking his head. It had rained hard on the night of the murder; perhaps that was why no one had heard her scream, and why, too, any evidence of footprints or the like had been washed down the drain. He hadn’t made anymore progress, but he would stay out until he did.

As he pondered, an idea came to him, and he jumped up, striding over to the gutter. They hadn’t checked the slurry very thoroughly - it wasn’t a nice job - but now he was sure there must be something there, some clue in the drains. He racked his brains, scratching his head and glancing around. It was then that a flash of colour caught his eye and he darted towards it clumsily, crouching down, withdrawing an evidence bag and a pair of tweezers from his pocket. The thing was so small it was a wonder it had survived the rainstorm, and a wonder that he had caught sight of it, too; if it hadn’t been for the contrast between the drab surroundings and the exceptional brightness of the object, he wouldn’t have seen it. Caught between two paving stones, a single, long, fine hair stuck out, the colour of crushed poppies. He extracted it carefully and deposited it in the bag. Anyone with hair so remarkable as that couldn’t go unnoticed for long - he would have to make inquiries.  _ Now, about that drain. _ He walked towards the gutter with an air of determination, though the thing was little more than an open sewer.  _ Someone should clean this place up _ . When he had joined the Yard he hadn’t expected to be sifting through slag-heaps, but here he was. Bending down, he changed into a new pair of gloves and, taking a long stick in hand, stirred the stagnant water around, wanting to bring something up. Nothing came to the surface other than a few apple cores, and he sighed, then tried again. Nothing. He moved a little to the left, further from the flat at the end of the street, and poked again. Something caught underneath his stick, but when he tried to lift it out it slipped away, so he tried again, attempting to lever whatever it was out of the gutter. It seemed that the object was lighter than he had expected, however, for it seemed to come loose, then floated up to the surface.

Abberline reached out and extracted the limp thing from the general waste. It was so covered in slime and slurry that he couldn’t tell what it was at first. He didn’t want to tamper with the evidence, but it seemed like a good idea to wash off the residue, so he ran it under a nearby pump a few times, allowing the water to sluice off the filth. When the real colours began to show through, he started back in surprise. Underneath all the dirt, the object proved to be made of some kind of white cloth. He scrubbed harder, and more white was revealed, along with a large, rust-red stain. The Detective Inspector’s eyes widened. He was holding a glove, a silk or satin glove - he didn’t know the difference, but it was a fancy, delicate fabric with a sheen that had been spoiled by the iron-coloured blot, a large brown splodge that coated the fingers and the palm.  _ Blood. _ He had seen enough blood this week to last him a lifetime; he knew it too well by now, he would not mistake it.  _ A blood-stained glove _ . His heart stopped. He almost laughed and cried out for joy, except it wouldn’t have been proper. But this was proof - this was  _ proof _ of something, of someone with a very neat pair of gloves - too small for his hands, so they were a woman’s - who had been involved in the murder. Granted, they could have belonged to Mary Kelly, but in that case...how had the glove ended up out here? He examined it again. It looked far too expensive to be worn by a common prostitute, unless of course she had had some very rich client, some...nobleman, who had wanted to cover his tracks.  _ He wanted the gloves back - perhaps he needed the money - romantic revenge, even - he took them from her, stained with blood, then dropped one in his haste... _ Abberline’s eyes lit up. If these gloves belonged to the murderer and only one of them was in the drain, then that meant - whoever committed the murder had the other!  _ A Cinderella murder. _ He cursed himself for his fanciful excitement, but really he couldn’t help it. They had one glass slipper, and whoever fitted the other would swing.  _ A grim fairy-tale indeed. _

It was then that Abberline heard footsteps behind him and spun around. There, clad in his usual layers of cape and cloak and overcoat and carrying a large, rather preposterous cane, stood Lord Randall. The young Inspector gasped and ran towards him, his eyes shining. Before Randall could even open his mouth to ask what was the matter, he had gushed, “Sir! Sir, I think I’ve found something - evidence, sure evidence of the Ripper!”

Randall’s bushy eyebrows rose, his grey eyes piercing. “Indeed,” he replied, but seemed strangely apathetic. Abberline frowned as his superior glanced around the street peremptorily, then said, “Put it back where you found it. Better to leave it.”

Abberline stared at him in shock. “But sir -” he began, squinting incredulously, “how can you say that? This could be -”

Randall silenced him with a look. “The case is closed,” he growled, turning aside. “Phantomhive’s report came through.”

Abberline started, his eyes widening again. “Earl Phantomhive?” he said, remembering his concern for the boy. “How is he? What did he say? Has he caught the murderer? Where’s he been all th-”

“Enough!” Randall gritted his teeth, frowning thunderously, and Abberline shut his mouth with a snap. Sometimes he could be so foolish in his enthusiasm, he had never learned to curb that habit. “I am not the boy’s handler. The letter arrived today, but it was sent the morning after the last murder. He claims to have been ill with some kind of fever. ‘Jack the Ripper’ will not be bothering us anymore; that is all.” Abberline opened his mouth to protest, but Randall cut him off. “If you want to know more than that, get yourself promoted.”

The Inspector sighed, glancing at the now-redundant glove in his hand. “I just don’t understand,” he said, “how you can let that boy languish.” He shook his head, Randall frowning. “Don’t you see how unhappy he is? He’s trapped with that awful butler of his, and I’m convinced - I  _ know _ as well as you do that that  _ man _ is a convicted criminal. How can you allow him to run free, when from what I hear he hasn’t even done his time?”

Randall sighed, uncomfortable. “Believe me, I would like to see that cur hang as much as you,” he growled, “but as long as he is with the Earl he has full immunity. Strictly speaking it’s not legal; some people seem to think they are above the law. Unfortunately, it appears that in this case they are right.” He tapped his stick on the pavement awkwardly, then roused himself. “Clear up and clear out. It’s over.”

Abberline nodded and tipped his bowler hat, a tight knot in his stomach. He glanced at the glove in his hand, then flung it back into the gutter vehemently, a muscle twitching in his jaw. For a second, he dawdled, then he, too, pulled himself together and called out to his men to withdraw. He would go back to the Yard and look at this Sebastian’s file. Though he might not be able to do anything after all, he felt he should know the truth.

The archives were as quiet as ever, the light even dimmer. He lit a candle stub and pressed it into a dusty holder, flipping through the booklets. It took him a long time to find the section for 1875, and then he knelt for eons, thumbing the pages of each folder, searching for the right one. It was only after half an hour that he realised what had happened, and started back in shock. It couldn’t be...had Ciel taken Sebastian’s file? Abberline hadn’t believed him capable of it, but now he wasn’t so sure. They were in cahoots, after all, and though he didn’t blame Ciel it was a dirty business all round.  _ All he has are secrets, more and more secrets _ , Abberline thought, frustrated. Well, there was one thing that Ciel hadn’t thought of - not to Abberline’s knowledge, anyway.  _ I’d better check it out. _

He got a handsom cab to Pentonville Prison, which cost him a pretty penny, but he didn’t have time to walk. The streets were crowded, a press conference was being held outside the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, and he thanked the Lord for the seclusion of the Yard. Though he worked for Her Majesty’s government, it paid to be a detective and not a constable. He had always wanted to do this job, though his whole family had warned him against it. Growing up in the barely-genteel fringes of Soho, in amongst the old Hugenot houses, he had had a colourful childhood, but one, too, filled with poverty, misery and crime. Not on the part of his family, who, though they sometimes struggled to make ends meet, managed alright without criminality, but on the part of his schoolfriends and everyone who lived just a few doors down. After he had seen his Jewish friend stoned by a gang of boys his age he had resolved to do something about all this injustice and squalor, and while he had not been rich enough for law school or politics, he had been able to join the police force. His visits to prisons were one of the less heroic sides of the job; Pentonville in particular was not a nice place to go, and it always made him think twice about his position, seeing the conditions in which prisoners were kept. If Sebastian had somehow got out of here he had to be considerably crafty, not to say dastardly - only with a solid amount of crookedness and a great amount of intelligence could one do such a thing. Abberline nodded to the guards, tipping his hat, and slid in through the side entrance.

The warder of this particular part of the gaol was a friend of a friend, and he thought that if he brought up the names of Randall and perhaps even Phantomhive, he might be able to get in. His guess was correct; since he was only going to look at the prison archives, they didn’t mind so much. It was those who visited the prisoners they hated the most, and thankfully he had a valid reason for his investigations, so that he hardly even needed to disguise them. Descending a cast-iron spiral staircase much like the one at the Yard, he entered the underground records room, considerably vaster than the one at HQ. Stacks stretched for what seemed like miles, his lantern hardly illuminating the thick, cobwebby darkness. He was shown down the aisles some way until they reached the correct place, the warder clapping him on the back, sighing, and saying, “I remember the bastard well. Still gives me shivers to think of him; I don’t know how he got off a death sentence, much less out of solitary. He’s infamous, he is - and you say you know him?” Abberline muttered some non-committal response and was left alone with his lantern and the file.

He sat down on the floor, carefully arranging his coat underneath him to try and avoid the worst of the dust stains. His fiancee wouldn’t be happy about it, he knew that much. A smile crossed his lips as he thought of her and the baby, but then he shook his head, turning his attention back to the booklet. _Work comes first_ , he thought, sighing. Within the cover of the folder was a photograph of Sebastian like the one he had seen at the Yard, all bruised and bloodied and furious - Abberline thought he looked like a beast, a far cry from the aristocratic underling he was now. He turned the page, flicking through, glancing at the witness statements, the prosecutors’ words, the victims’ testimonies. His eyes widened as he read on. _He took me by the hand...led me into a back alley...I had no idea, honest...he had a box of matches...he told me it would be fun...he told me I was pretty..._ The evidence seemed to just keep on piling up. _I saw him, I heard him, I knew him, I noticed him._ How many acquaintances had this man had? He was _hated_ , that much was clear; it seemed he had been infamous in the East End, even before his conviction. Then Abberline came to the verdict, and his eyes widened, the colour draining from his face. _Charged with murder, patricide, fratricide, matricide; arson, on multiple counts; fraud, theft and false imprisonment; gross indecency and buggery on multiple counts._ _Found guilty of the murder of his parents and siblings, the crimes of buggery and indecency, fraternising with the same sex, incendiarism and fraud. Sentence: death by hanging._

Abberline caught his breath. His eyes smarted, as if even reading of such horrors were poisonous. He carefully replaced the file on the shelf, then got to his feet, carrying his lantern out. As soon as he was in the street once more, he breathed a sigh of relief, swallowed his bile, and called for a cab. They crossed London Bridge, they passed into the suburbs, and drew up outside the Phantomhive townhouse. He got down, flung half a crown to the driver and told him to wait, then ran up the steps as fast as he could, hammering on the door.

There was no reply. He knocked louder, sweating, stamping his feet, snorting in the cold air, winded but prepared to do whatever it took. No sounds within, no response, no nothing.  _ Is he trying to keep me out? _ Abberline wondered, and remembered that the Earl was sick. He tried to see which window belonged to the boy’s bedroom, but all the curtains were closed.  _ That’s odd. In the day time? _ He ran round to the side of the house and knocked on the tradesman’s entrance, then found that the door was locked. Panicking, flying back round to the front of the house, he tried again, but it was no use, that door was locked too, and then, and then - 

He dashed into the stables. They, too, were locked, but he could see in through a patch of glass, and there was nothing; the animals, their bridle and the coach were all gone, everything was shut up. He gasped for breath, mystified, and traipsed back to the drive. So the Earl was not here - then where was he?

A servant had heard him knocking, and came round to the front. He crouched down in front of her, panting heavily, and said, “Thank God, thank God. I’m looking for the Earl, I need to see him, where is he?”

She frowned at him, her hands on her hips, suspicious. “I don’t work here, I work next door.” Her eyebrows rose as she took in the Inspector’s shabby appearance. “If it’s Earl Phantomhive you’re looking for, he’s gone back to the country. The season’s over, there’s no reason to stay.” He stared at her, so heartbroken that she seemed to relent slightly. “Look, I’m sorry. I don’t have their address, but maybe - if you wanted to write a letter, I’m sure -”

He hung his head, then shook it sadly. “It’s alright,” he said. “It’s alright.” He seemed exceptionally calm, though he had been shouting like a madman only moments before.  _ That’s nearly a crown I’ve wasted on taxis _ , he thought, sighing. For of course, he didn’t know the Earl at all, and he certainly couldn’t help him. No, Ciel was beyond help now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SPOOKTOBER! ok sorry i'm just excited. Enjoy the chapter? Leave a comment! Also Abberline is my baby boy


	21. In the Daytime: That Butler, Triumphant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of the Jack the Ripper case, Ciel contemplates his changed self and lays to rest his beloved Aunt. The Underworld does not sleep, but neither does he...

It took long enough, but eventually the fuss died down. Newspapers began to report other crimes, incidents, scandals, the people of the East End traipsed back to drudgery and the stupor of poverty, the ties between the upper and lower classes were forgotten once more. It was a month after the fact, and the aristocracy could now mention Jack the Ripper in passing with a little shiver of delight, neither feeling too sullied nor having to think too deeply. Ciel had recovered from the smogs of London and the nasty chill he had caught along with the Ripper, and he now returned to the outskirts of the city one last time before the turn of the year. He had spent days and nights convalescing back at the manor, waited on by Sebastian and Tanaka, dead to the world. His chest still hurt, and there was a wheeze in his voice that would not go away.  _ Should’ve been more careful. _ Still, he doubted it would have taken him so long to recuperate if Sebastian’s methods of looking after him hadn’t been so contradictory. All day the butler would fuss over him, silent as the grave, bringing him hot and cold compresses and tea and milk and invalid’s gruel, admonishing the other servants if they so much as breathed, leaving Ciel alone in his bed with a handful of books that weren’t too taxing, and no escape; then, when evening drew in and the other servants retired, the butler would come to his room, invariably under the excuse of running him a bath, and they would copulate in whichever way best pleased him that night, until, exhausted and spoiled, Ciel would finally prepare for bed and fall into the unrefreshing, dead sleep of exhaustion, his butler beside him, either sleeping or sitting or else standing guard, watching the Watchdog. In his dreams, the Earl felt his presence, always there no matter what; when he awoke, Sebastian would have gone, following darkness like a dream, seeming to be a hellish nightmare, a fleeting fantasy. 

The sky was a stiff blue beyond the window, a diluted version of his own eye colour. Ciel wondered whether it was better or worse for such dazzling weather to accompany a funeral - he supposed that, since it was now December, the cold would put any thoughts of frivolity from the minds of the congregation, the celeste and azzurro sky bringing them that bit closer to heaven and Michelangelo. It was laughable, really, the pageant of it all, but necessary; he didn’t want to draw the least bit of attention to Madam Red’s death. There was enough suspicion already, of course, and a fair amount of rumours, but Undertaker always did a good job fixing his clients up to seem neat and orderly and spreading counter-rumours, too, if one paid extra, so Ciel wasn’t worried overmuch. As they drew up outside the churchyard, he could see the old man in his shabby top-hat leaning against the smart hearse filled with rose petals that was standing empty behind the chapel. It would be a Catholic service with anthems and arias, just as Madam Red would have hated, just as Ciel’s mother would have desired, had she been alive to witness the death of her sister. The cold, white building was not the place where Ciel’s parents had had their funeral, but they had been buried in the grounds of the manor - or at least, their empty coffins had been buried there. He didn’t want Madam Red’s body to rest there, too; a murderess, and more to the point his victim, lying in the ground that he trod day-to-day - it didn’t sit well with him. Besides, she had always despised the Phantomhives by her own admission. Better to have her buried in London, nearer the frivolous society she had always seemed to cherish. A big open service showed the public that he was unafraid and that her death was nothing suspicious, nothing shameful.

The carriage stopped and Sebastian got down off the box and opened the door. Ciel climbed down, allowing his butler to support him, though he gritted his teeth. With his chest still weak he had no choice but to rely on his servant - the situation played nicely into Sebastian’s hands. Ciel couldn’t help wondering if he’d let his butler win, but, while this didn’t feel like triumph, this didn’t feel like defeat, either.  _ We’re too closely connected to be able to fight each other, _ he thought. They were already doomed, had been from the moment the lines between them had begun to blur. He had often wondered, of late, when that process had begun, but it was hard to say. Sebastian was too like him, and he was too like Sebastian; they could not help merging, even if it was loathsome to them both. He walked stiffly down the path between the graves, by the neatly trimmed turf, approaching Undertaker. “Is everything ready?” he asked, glancing at the box of rose petals.

The Undertaker giggled and clicked his nails together. “Oh yes, everything is as you ordered, Lord Earl,” he guffawed, his insinuating smile grating on Ciel’s nerves. “I dressed her up nice and pretty, quite a state she was in, hmmm?” The Earl did not reply. Beneath his mop of grey hair, Undertaker’s eyes flashed a startling colour. “Bold of you to choose an open coffin…”

Ciel ignored him and walked past, disgusted. If the old man couldn’t refrain from giving hints even on this most sensitive of occasions he was really not worth the corpses he dressed. Sebastian followed close behind him and Undertaker watched them both, observing what a pretty pair they made. The boy looked pale - it seemed he was not taking as good care of his body or his soul, in spite of Undertaker’s warnings. The doors to the church were open, organ music drifting out, Bach’s Passacaglia in C minor reverberating in the air. Ciel had chosen it himself; he liked the symmetry of the piece, its finality, its solemnity. It made death and hatred and sorrow seem heroic, full of pathos, a far cry from the bathetic, humiliating reality of all tragedy. He closed his eyes, allowing himself to forget, to tune into the cool, dark tones, the oceanic colours that swam before him, sombre emerald and amaranth and sapphire, that blue that seemed to surround him in an insulating bubble wherever he went. When he opened his eyes, he saw that everyone was seated, waiting.

The vicar began his eulogy. “We are gathered here today…” Ciel zoned out quickly. It was boring, traditional, Catholic stuff - the sort of thing he was supposed to like, the sort of thing that ran in the family, that his parents, too, were supposed to have liked...He couldn’t imagine his father liking it, though. His mother had been pretty passive, but she had been gentle, too, and all that doom and gloom and mysticism seemed rather too heavy for her. Of course, she had been married to one of the Villainous Nobles, so perhaps she had known more sorrow than he conjectured, but...He waited, leaning against the wall of the church, the cold stone putting an extra sliver of ice into his heart. Near the front of the room he spied a set of blonde curls bound in crepe and lace, beside it another, much higher up, on a very long and erect neck, similar hair now going somewhat grey under a severe hat.  _ Lizzie and Aunt Frances _ , he thought, his stomach churning. This was why he had waited to sit down, why he now wobbled on his two feet at the back of the room, apart from the congregation, lurking in the shadows. His absence would be noted, but he didn’t plan to lurk forever; it was just nice to have some privacy for once, and to pretend that his butler wasn’t standing close by. He heard the droning of the old man at the front draw to a close and drew himself up, taking strength from the loveliness of the stained-glass rose window that shone above the coffin, the artistry that blotted out everything else, the sound of Bach still ringing in his ears. It was time. 

The swathe of fabric was heavy over his shoulder but he bore himself remarkably upright, gathering his strength, walking calmly down the aisle. Heads turned, whispers running round the room, silk dresses and coattails rustling as the guests shifted in their seats. He did not look at them, not a single one, only held his head high and took the weight of the crimson dress, though it encumbered him. Someone seemed to say that he looked pale, another that his cheekbones were sharper than usual, comments as to whether he looked better or worse after his illness beginning to rise from treacherous lips. He stopped his ears with the thundering rain and the cries of Madam Red and gunshots and Sebastian’s moans and Bach, his footsteps echoing in the cold heights of the ceiling. When he reached the dais he climbed up, passing the priest, completely ignoring him, and coming to rest on the edge of the coffin. Of course it had all been pre-planned, but not everyone knew that, and even the priest hadn’t known he’d be bringing a dress, only that he’d be giving a speech or reading of some sort. He perched on the hardwood altar, leaning over the embalmed body of his aunt.

Undertaker had done a good job. Her red hair was impeccable, immaculate, arranged in such a way as to frame her face and hide the padding that shielded her broken head from sight. Her eyes were closed and he felt a strong desire within him to stretch back her eyelids and see what her new, glass eyes looked like, but quelled it, disgusted with himself. The seams that criss-crossed her face were almost invisible, tiny, feather-light stitches holding the skin together. Ciel even wondered if some of that was not her own skin, or whether Undertaker had transplanted skin from another part of her body that was hidden by the white frock she wore. That was the only bit he objected to - she was clad all in angelic white, washing her out, making the scars on her face stand out just a bit more than they should have, the lilies that surrounded her giving off an overpowering scent of decay. He despised lilies, but he supposed Undertaker had done it just to annoy him.  _ Well. _ Opening his mouth, he said, quietly but audibly, “You look beautiful, Aunt Ann. But so pale - white is not your colour.” He swept the red dress from off his shoulder and, with a flourish, settled it on top of her, spreading out the skirts and bodice until it looked passably like she was actually wearing the frock. As a final touch, he settled a single, flaming spider lily behind her ear, disturbing her hair just enough to glimpse a skinless patch of skull. This, then, was the price they paid for appearances. He bent over her and kissed her on the cheek, then whispered, “Lycoris radiata, the colour that blazes the earth.” In a slightly louder voice he added, “Goodbye, Madam Red.”

It didn’t feel like a goodbye. He’d said goodbye to her in Whitechapel, when he’d decided to end her life. That farewell had been too painful to handle; he wouldn’t dwell on it. He raised his eyes to the open doors at the other end of the chapel, a haze of light streaming in, and caught the silhouette of his butler, at once smoky and distinct against the brightness. Sebastian was looking right at him. Suddenly, a cloud of red exploded behind him, and Ciel watched as the petals burst into the room, the cold wind carrying them from Undertaker’s cart into the chapel. A faint scent of fading summer followed them, the air currents becoming turbulent so that they began to drift down over the guests, falling like drops of blood from the sky. Ciel sighed, staring into the middle distance, staring into Sebastian’s red eyes that had none of the delicacy of his aunt’s. That was what they called it, in French - a man who was what Sebastian was to Ciel was known as his aunt.  _ Ma tante. Ma tante est morte, un petit mort. Quelle ironie. _ Hopping down lightly, Ciel nodded to the priest and took up his seat beside Lizzie, who was still staring at the petals with wide eyes, but pressed his hand when she saw him. That warm, friendly pressure made his chest hurt, and he thought of another pressure, far more invasive, far more cruel, far more treacherous, and swallowed. He heard the gasps but did not glance round to see the effect of his little trick with the flowers.

When the refreshments were consumed and the icy breeze had begun to blow more silver across the sky, the guests dissipated, climbing into carriages, hailing handsom cabs, strolling down the hill. Most of them had had very little in common, being part of a large circle of acquaintances that Madam Red and the Phantomhives moved through, extending through every level of high society. Not much more than small talk had occurred, and Ciel was glad of that. He had made sure that the members of women’s society to which Madam Red had belonged had not attended; he had made sure, too, that they would keep quiet about the connection and the murders. A philanthropic organisation like that rarely remembered the names of those they helped, since its members did good not for the sake of the souls they saved, but for their own sakes, to save their own souls. Madam Red had chosen to damn her soul, and she had lived and died with the consequences. Ciel didn’t really believe in an afterlife, though he had been brought up Christian; his father had been less religious than his mother, and had often told him not to worry about _all that_. He glanced down at the gravestone before him, thinking. On it was engraved the name  _ Mary Kelly _ , with an estimated date of birth and the date of her death. No messages, no wishes or prayers to go with it - nothing. 

“Such kindness,” Sebastian said in that sonorous, lilting voice of his. 

Ciel did not turn around. “I’m not kind,” he replied, staring at the inscription.

Sebastian raised his eyebrows. “Oh?” he said, mischief in his bland tone. “Am I then to assume that you acted not out of kindness, but out of some other, weaker instinct? Shall I then call you - coward?”

Disturbed, Ciel turned around, shaking his head. “I’m not a coward - it was the least I could do,” he said. “She had no family, no friends, nobody claimed her. Nobody wanted to be associated with her. But I was not kind to her. I planned to catch Jack the Ripper by letting her die, and when the time came I acted on that intention, doing nothing. If I had factored trying to save her into my plan , I could have done so.”

“I know that,” Sebastian replied carelessly. “But for a second, while you held that gun to your aunt’s head, I thought you weren’t going to kill her. You hesitated to murder your own flesh and blood; perhaps you were having second thoughts?” His eyes were bright, his voice sharp, and Ciel felt that tight heat return to his chest so that he had to suppress a cough, forcing the viscous, choking warmth to release its stranglehold.

“Do not talk so openly,” he spat, disgusted. “Anyone might hear you. It was not kindness that guided me, nor weakness.”

“What was it, then?” Sebastian’s response was swift. 

Ciel turned around to face him fully, looking him in the eye. “Our contract states that you will protect me if I am in danger of grievous harm. Jack the Ripper was clinging to my boots, and you did nothing. I wanted to see if you would make good on our agreement when the time came. I expect you to lay down your life for me - that is nothing less than the terms of our agreement. It was not my job to kill Madam Red; it was yours. You violated our contract, and I should turn you over to the police for that.” Sebastian’s eyes widened and Ciel contemplated him calmly, the warmth of triumph at last smouldering beneath his heart. He looked back up the hill, past his butler.

“Madam Red hesitated to kill me, her own kin. There was doubt in her eyes - she could not do it. Madam Red hesitated and lost sight of her next move, that’s all. In chess, a single hesitation can be fatal. In life, a moment of doubt can cost one everything. That is why I need you. And that is why I will not hesitate.

“Sebastian!” The butler snapped to attention as his master brushed past him, his eyes widening. “This is an order. Never betray me, never lie to me. You must be the one man who remains loyal to me for all eternity. You must stay by my side until the very end, no matter what!” The Earl’s gaze when he looked back at his butler was piercing, his sapphire eye burning.

Sebastian smiled and bowed; he knew what his master meant, what he could not say. Kneeling on the windy hilltop, beside the grave of Madam Red, he pressed a hand to his heart and pledged himself with three simple words.

“Yes, my lord.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. Jesus fucking christ. Tis over. This has been an incredible lockdown ride. In these times of uncertainty, playing the crime-novelist/puppet-master has been a joy, and I hope you've enjoyed watching these familiar characters dancing on my strings. I'm not Yana and I don't have a team of assistants to help me out, but I don't think I made a bad job of it. Anyway, leave kudos and comments if you liked it, feel free to bookmark, and I'll see you some time in the murky future :)

**Author's Note:**

> Ok so! New fandom, new fic, it has begun again! I'll probably update once a week or once a fortnight, can't promise amazing quality but I hope you enjoy it. This won't be super smutty but there'll probably be some at the end, so if you can afford to wait and enjoy this retelling of the Ripper arc then buckle up.


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